The Protector: The Buildup
by LetsTalkLife
Summary: When she manages to get back to Beacon Hills, Lorraine notices some changes. Then again, the others notice some changes in her as well. What happened? And what will happen when the Alpha Pack comes into town? New powers, new friends, new enemies, and more await her. Second in the Protector series. Stiles/OC, rated T for language. Second in the Protector series
1. Chapter x

**A/N: Hey! I will only do an author's note at the beginning of this chapter, for all the others it'll be at the end.**

 **Welcome to the second story in the Protector series: The Buildup! If you haven't read the first story, I definitely recommend it (unless you want to confuse yourself, which is possible I guess)**

 **This story will follow the show, only there will be changes as it includes my OC, Lorraine Hield. I personally like to picture Olivia Holt playing her when I write, but I won't put any descriptions (e.g "I brushed my blonde hair") as I know from personal experience that sometimes people like to picture someone else and it can be annoying to read something that contradicts that.**

 **So, without any further ado: here's the promised mini-chapter!**

 **Chapter X: Meanwhile in Beacon Hills**

Stiles was panicking. Just three minutes ago Lorraine had walked into the woods, and she hadn't come back. He'd followed her, of course, but after a while of calling out her name and walking he grew afraid that someone had taken her (and that he wouldn't be able to find the way back) so he turned around. When he was about to call his dad, a guy in a black jeep arrived. A guy who was currently yelling at him.

"What do you mean, she's gone?"

"She heard something, went to check it out and didn't come back, okay?" Stiles said, his voice louder than usual but his worry not allowing him to yell back.

"What's your name?" the guy asked, taking out his gun and cocking it.

"Stiles." he answered, swallowing hard as he looked at the gun. The guy let out a sigh and shook his head.

"I'm Jason." he introduced himself, holding out a hand which Stiles didn't shake. He nodded and let his arm fall to his side. "Fair enough. Anyway, I'm Lorraine's cousin." Stiles felt relief wash over him. Not an ex-boyfriend then. Lorraine had mentioned this Jason guy a few times, and she seemed to think highly of him, so Stiles was glad they were just cousins. A thought he immediately mentally slapped himself for, as there were way more important things to worry about right now.

"Can you find her?" Stiles asked. Jason shrugged, fired his gun twice into the air and waited. Silence. He shook his head.

"She's either not here anymore or she's out of it. I'll send a team over here, search the area. If they don't find anything, go to the sheriff's department." he said, putting his gun back in the holster. He then walked back to his jeep and came back with a black body bag in his hands. He stopped by the body of Lorraine's father.

"Damn Pete." he said, shaking his head. "So many things that could've killed you and it had to be a bullet." He proceeded to put the body into the bag, Stiles watching with wide eyes the entire time. When he was done, Jason looked at Stiles with a raised eyebrow.

"Well, kid? You going to help me or not?"

"What? Eh- yeah." Stiles said, running over to him and helping him put the body in the trunk. He shivered at the thought. He was putting a body in a trunk. The body of his best friends' father. Well, one of his best friends anyway.

~o~

 _The day after_

Scott and Stiles had snuck into Lydia's room in the hospital to check out if her wound had healed, and if she would become a werewolf or not. When they lifted the bandage, it was still fresh.

"Has it healed?" Stiles, who was looking the other way, asked.

"No." Scott said, frowning in confusion. "But the doctors said she was gonna make it." he put the bandage back and shook his head. "Derek said the bite either turns you or kills you."

"Unless she's not human." Stiles said. Scott looked at him with a frown on his face. "Something Lorraine once said." A pit formed in his stomach as he thought about her. Jason's team hadn't found anything, so he'd gone to Stiles' father. He'd told him that he was visiting for the weekend, and her father had suddenly passed away of a heart attack during the night. When Lorraine had heard the news, she'd wanted to go for a walk and hadn't come back. That's what the sheriff beliefs now anyway.

"So if she's not human…" Scott said, pulling Stiles from his thoughts. "Than what is she?"

"I… don't know. Maybe there's something in the bestiary, but I doubt that it would help." Stiles said, shrugging.

Scott let out a chuckle. "Dude, I think you mean bestial-"

"No I don't!" Stiles yelled, smacking him on the shoulder. "It's like an encyclopaedia for mythical creatures. It's hundreds, maybe thousands of pages long and very, very old. Lorraine was constantly translating pages of it after she dropped out of school."

"You think you can borrow it?" Scott asked.

"I just said the thing was hundreds of pages long, do you think it would help?"

"Fair point."

"Yeah." Stiles said, looking around nervously. "Now let's get out of here."

~o~

Jackson hissed in pain as he poured alcohol over his wound. Derek had given him the bite, just like he'd wanted to. Even though it hurt like a bitch, Jackson was pleased. He'd finally become a werewolf and then he'd kick McCall's butt.

~o~

Isaac let out a sigh as his phone went to voicemail yet again. He'd tried calling Lorraine for days now, but she hadn't answered any of his messages. She'd disappeared from the formal, then didn't show up the day after when they were supposed to hang out, and every time he tried to ask Stiles, the boy would get really stressed out and eventually walk away.

He let his phone fall on the couch and turned on the TV, that was still on channel one, the news. He was about to switch channels when a familiar face appeared on the screen.

" _Teenager Lorraine Hield is still missing. Two days ago she'd gone on a walk after hearing her father had passed away, and she hasn't returned since. The Sheriff's department urges anyone who thinks to have seen her to call them immediately. The number is shown below. Lorraine is currently sixteen years of age, has blonde hair and green eyes, she's five foot two tall and was last spotted wearing blue jeans and a black leather jacket. Again, if you have any information please call the number below. Now onto a peculiar case: the dead woman found in Beacon Hills might be the one behind the fir-"_

Isaac turned off the TV, tears in his eyes.

~o~

Allison smiled as Scott wrapped his arms around her. They were lying on her roof, watching the moon and the stars in the night sky.

"Do you think they'll be alright? Lydia and Lorraine?" she asked, looking up at him. He shook his head.

"I don't know. Bu-" he sighed as his phone started to ring. "Sorry." he said, answering it. "Hello… Stiles slow down. She's what? How- I'm coming." he said, hanging up.

"What's wrong?" Allison asked, watching as he stood up.

"Lydia, she's gone from the hospital." Scott said. "Stiles thinks I might be able to find her using her scent. I need to go."

"I'm coming with you." Allison said, pushing herself off the roof and walking back to her window. "I'll see you there." She left no space for him to argue, so Scott just set off towards the hospital, where Stiles was waiting for them.

Life in Beacon Hills was never going to be the same again.

 **A/N: So that's it... we all know what happens afterwards. Well, what happens afterwards in the series anyway. Since Lorraine isn't there, you can pretty much picture what happened in the series for the events that would've followed that last bit.**

 **As I said at the end of the last story, the first "real" chapter will be uploaded in a month. I made this little chapter because I wanted to include it in the story, but also because this is easier. If you're interested in reading this story, you can now follow it instead of remembering to come back to it in a month.**

 **Thanks you so much for reading, and I'll see you in the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	2. Chapter one

**Chapter one: The Return**

I was exhausted. I was exhausted and just when I thought that I was done travelling, when I was finally back home… the doors were locked. Of course. And someone had taken the garden gnome and the spare key that lay underneath it. I knew there was no use in trying to break in (the house was too secured for that), so that left me with one option: go to the closest safety point. Which would be the sheriff's station.

I'd only been there once, but it was only a couple of blocks away, so I should be able to see it from above. Which meant I had to fly. Again. I just hoped I wouldn't plummet to my death.

The good thing about the station was that there was always someone there, so I at least had a safe place to stay for the night. Only this time, there was no one at the front desk. When I looked around a bit, I discovered that was because she was behind it. Lying on the floor. Dead. Covered in blood. I just couldn't have waited a day, couldn't I?

People were talking, so I went where I thought the voices were coming from. There was a constant "don't do it" ringing through my head, but I ignored it. I walked around a corner and butted heads with someone. Two arms steadied me to prevent me from falling.

"Shh." the person said, putting one hand over my mouth. I mentally prepared myself for breaking free. "There's a Kanima around here." Relief washed over me as I recognised Derek's voice. The relief was gone when something hissed at us. I turned my head and saw the Kanima Derek's must've been talking about. Only it wasn't in full Kanima form. Only half his face was covered in scales, but he had his claws out. Jackson.

"After you." he said, a sick smirk on his face as he gestured towards a door that had "sheriff" written on it. Derek stepped between me and Jackson.

"Go. I'll follow." he said. I walked over to the door, Derek and Jackson following me. My hand was already on the door handle when Jackson put his hand on my shoulder. His ice cold, slimy hand.

"Him first." he said, pulling me away and then pushing Derek towards the door. "Knock." More than a bit reluctantly, Derek knocked on the door, after which Jackson made a small cut in the back of his neck. Shit. Even though Derek is strong, the paralysing venom would soon take over his body.

Before that could happen, the door swung open. Behind it was Scott, who looked very relieved to see Derek. "Oh thank God." Of course, what happened next was that Derek fell face first on the floor, the venom had reached his legs. Once he overcame his initial shock, Scott looked back up and saw me standing in front of Jackson. But it wasn't him who was the first to speak.

"Lorraine?"

My heart jumped a bit and my head immediately turned towards the person who'd just spoken. Stiles. Oh what was he doing here? "Hi." I said, only just managing to bring out the word. My throat was fucked up, man.

"Who the hell is she?" a clearly psychopathic, brown-haired male teenager yelled, looking at Scott.

"Ehm- that's Lorraine. She was- is a protector, they… protect people. A while ago, she disappeared and we thought that she died and now she's back." Scott was slowly overcoming his shock, but fell back into it when the psycho glared at me. "Uh-she, she… knows a lot. Whatever it is that you want, she can help." he glanced at me, a fearful expression on his face. "Right?" I just nodded, as lying paralysed on the floor wasn't on my bucket list.

"Right, so we have werewolves, kanimas, hunters… and now protectors too? It's like a freaking halloween party every full moon!" the psycho yelled. "Get her in here." Jackson pushed me forwards, sending me stumbling over Derek. I would've fallen hadn't it been for Stiles, who caught me.

"You okay?" he whispered as he pulled me up. I nodded and he slowly let me go, slowly moving to stand between me and the psycho. Since I was still pretty exhausted and felt like I could fall asleep any second, I let him. Outside, a car approached the building, the headlights beaming through the blinds.

"Is that her?" the psycho asked. Scott closed his eyes, his breathing growing faster. "If you do as I tell you to, I won't hurt her. I won't even let Jackson near her."

"Scott, don't trust him." Stiles said. That didn't make psycho very happy. Within seconds, Stiles was lying paralysed on the floor with psycho's foot pushing down on his neck.

"This work better for you?" he yelled, pushing down harder and harder, Stiles' face growing red as he struggled to breathe. I felt like my own lungs were being cut off as I watched. I couldn't take it any longer. I pushed Matt away and then pulled Stiles away from him. Bad move. I'd been too distracted to remember that there was a killer lizard with paralyzing venom in the room. Said lizard immediately cut my neck, paralysing me. (rude) Soon a numb feeling spread down to my arms, and then my legs. I fell down on my back, just next to Stiles.

"You," Matt said. "With me. You, lock them up here." I heard keys jingling and people leaving the room, followed by the lock closing. The three of us -Stiles, Derek, and I- laid there in silence for a while, waiting to make sure they were gone.

"Where have you been?" Stiles eventually asked. I assumed he meant me, so I let out a sigh and answered.

"Training." It came out so distorted that I don't even know if they could understand me, but neither of them attempted to ask me questions after that, so I think they noticed how much talking hurt.

"What does that Matt kid want?" Derek asked instead.

"Well, we already destroyed all evidence my dad had against him…" Stiles said, looking at me through the corner of his eye. "I don't know." They didn't talk any further, and I felt myself slowly drifting away. Now that I was lying down, my brain decided that it was time to sleep.

"Lorraine?" Stiles asked as my eyes started to close. "Lora?"

"I think she's falling asleep." Derek said.

"Sh- how is she falling asleep?" Stiles yelled, though his voice became softer and softer. But that was probably just me falling asleep.

"She looks … travel… exhausted..." Derek's words kept fading and coming back, until I fell asleep for good.

~o~

I woke up on a couch, one which I recognised to be the one in Stiles' living room. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, judging by the clock and the amount of light in the room. With a soft groan, I stretched out. It has been days, maybe weeks since I slept that long. Not sure what to do, I stood up and walked around a bit, looked at some pictures on the walls and eventually found my way to the kitchen, where Stiles' dad sat at the table, piles of papers in front of him.

"Hey." he said, smiling when he saw me. "You're up." I just smiled back at him and pointed at the clock with a questioning expression on my face. He nodded, understanding what I wanted to ask.

"Oh, round and about… seventeen hours?" he answered, looking at his watch. He then grew serious. "Lorraine, I know you've just woken up, and Stiles told me that you probably couldn't talk, but… where have you been the past two months?" I shook my head. No, please no. The one thing I didn't want to do was talk about it.

"Okay, okay. We'll handle that when you're ready. Now, you drink coffee?" he asked. I nodded and he stood up and walked towards the coffee machine. "With milk?" Another nod. As he made the coffee, I sat down at the table, not sure what else to do. I think the sheriff was determined not to let silence fall, as he continued our pretty one-sided conversation.

"Stiles is still at school, I think. Should get home any minute now." he said over his shoulder. "You ehh, want to know what happened last night?" he asked. I nodded, so he started talking, turning back to the coffee.

"Well, to be quite honest with you, I don't know what exactly went down. But that Matt kid, he… well he killed every deputy present, locked the rest of us up. When he was a child, he nearly drowned. There was a party, at Lahey's house. The swimming team had won the nationals, and there was alcohol. I guess I don't need to tell you what the team did with that. They threw Matt into the pool and he nearly drowned. Now, after all these years, he started killing off the swimming team one by one, starting with mister Lahey. Las-"

"Isaac?" I interrupted him. The sheriff looked down, as if he felt ashamed.

"He went on the run after his father died. But he's staying at a friend's house now." I nodded at that, but wondered who the friend was. Probably Derek. "Anyway, so last night, we don't know how. But he drowned in the river, a few yards away from the station. And that's it." The coffee machine let out a few beeps, and soon I had a hot cup of coffee between my hands, occasionally sipping it whilst I watched the sheriff work. Speaking of which, why wasn't he at the station? I was considering asking him when the front door opened, soon followed by the kitchen door.

"Dad, is sh-" Stiles whispered, then he stopped when he saw me. "Hey." he said, the volume of his voice still softer than usual, but no longer a whisper. I smiled at him.

"Do you want to…" he pointed up, and I nodded. "Dad, we're gonna go upstairs." he said as I stood up, leaving the half-empty mug on the table.

"It's your turn to get dinner." the sheriff reminded him as we left the room. Stiles muttered something under his breath as I followed him upstairs and into his room. As soon as I got into the room, I searched his desk for a paper and pen to write down the question I've wanted to ask the moment I got back.

"Does Lydia know she's a... banshee?" Stiles read, frowning until he realised what exactly was on the paper. "What?" he exclaimed. I took that as a no. "Wh- how do you know?" I looked at the paper, considering writing it all down. Instead, I started talking, even though it hurt like hell. I wanted to explain it properly.

"I heard her scream. It's… a bit weird, but-"

"Stop, stop." Stiles said. "You're hurting yourself." He took out his phone and handed

it to me with the Notes app opened. I smiled at him as a thank you and started typing, Stiles reading along as I did.

' _Ravens and Banshees can have a connection, if they know each other well and are generally in the same area at the time of the first shift. When a Banshee screams, the Raven connected to them can hear it in their minds from miles away, immediately knowing their location. I could hear Lydia scream several times.'_

"So, you're a Raven now?" he asked, a frown on his face. As far as I'd told him, Ravens were the birds. And that was true, only...

' _We haven't come up with a better name yet.'_

"Who's we?"

' _The Ravens have a community. That isn't very good at making up names.'_

"Is that where you've been?" he asked. I nodded, but was scared that he tried to go further into the topic, so I typed: ' _What have I missed?'_ Stiles let out a sigh at that.

"Well, it's a long list: Jackson is now a Kanima, Lydia is… apparently a Banshee, Allison's grandfather is now staying in town and he's now the new principal-"

' _Gerard?'_ I typed. Stiles looked at the screen and nodded.

"Yeah… that's bad isn't it?"

' _Very, but continue.'_

"Allison's mother died, and I think that Gerard used that to get into Allison's head. Anyway, Derek made Boyd, Erica, and Isaac into werewolves. Or they agreed to or I don't know, but Boyd and Erica are still fugitives.. And that night at the station Scott's mom saw him shift, so now they're not talking. But… it's not over yet. The Argents are hunting down all werewolves, they don't follow a code anymore, and Jackson is still out there. It's like hell might break loose every second now. Lydia has been acting weird, but right now she seems like the sanest one of us all."

Without realising, I'd grabbed his hand. Though I didn't have super hearing, or smell… I'd become good at seeing how Stiles was feeling. I put the phone on the desk with my free hand and pulled him towards me, hugging him.

"I'm sorry." I said, tears in my eyes. I should've been in town to prevent all this, or at least to help.

"Hey, hey." he said, wrapping his arms around me. "It's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong." I almost let out a scoff at that. If only he knew.

"So… dad said you could stay here for a while if you want to." he said. "I know the couch isn't much, and you don't have to but-"

"Thank you." I said, before he kept talking about it for three minutes straight. And before he went back to the topic, I changed it. "I could cook." I offered, letting go of him and stepping away, giving myself the space to wipe off the few tears that I'd let escape.

"You don't have to do that. I'll just order some takeout, we'll be fine." I shook my head ever so slightly. If it was takeout today, it would be takeout the next, and then drive-thru the day after. Besides, I didn't want to lie around all day and do nothing. So I just gave him a look. He rolled his eyes at me, actually thinking he'd win this fight.

"I said no. You want to hear it in German? Nein." he said, so I raised an eyebrow at him and waited. Eventually he gave in. "Okay, fine. But we haven't got any food, so whatcha going to do about that?" A smug smile formed on his face, but I had an idea or two to get that off.

~o~

"So… what are you going to make?" Stiles asked. I was walking around the store, picking out the ingredients I needed whilst he followed me with the shopping car. I walked back towards him with a package of spaghetti, giving him a pointed look. "Well, spaghetti, I assume." he said, giving me a smile, which I returned with a faint one before continuing to walk towards the vegetables. "Hey, are you sure you're okay?" he asked, trying his best to catch up with me without jamming the cart into something. I just gestured at my throat.

"Yeah, still can't talk. Fair point." he said. "How come your throa-"

"Lora?" a voice called out, making me snap up my head. In front of me stood Isaac, looking at me with an unsure expression, between scared and happy. "I thought I heard you were back." he said, a broad smile forming on his face. He then walked towards me and gave me a hug.

"Hey." I said, patting on his back. "How's being a fugitive like?" He let go of me and stepped back, his smile slightly faded now.

"Not fun. But I'm fine now, thanks to his father." he said, nodding at Stiles, who was standing behind us. "What's wrong with your voice?"

I just shook my head and took out my phone. Isaac looked at Stiles with a frown on his face, silently asking him what I was doing. Meanwhile, I was typing.

"It's how we talk." Stiles said, walking over to stand next to us. "Sort of, anyway." I held up Stiles' phone so they could read what I wanted to say.

Isaac tilted his head as he read it aloud. "Show me your eyes?" He sighed, but closed his eyes for a while, then opened them to show that they had a golden/brown light. I smiled at him. He hadn't killed an innocent.

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Okay, that's, that's great and all, but what are you doing here? Scott said that you told him that Erica and Boyd were going to run away to join another pack."

"I'm not going." Isaac said, determined. "I've still got some friends here." he said, winking at me. I rolled my eyes at him, knowing he was just teasing. Next to me, Stiles rolled his eyes too, but in a very different manner. Isaac noticed and raised a suggestive eyebrow at me, which I gave him a glare for.

"Anyway, I just wanted to make sure you were okay." Isaac said, averting his eyes from mine. "By the way, you can expect Derek on your doorstep sometime soon. He was worrying himself sick." I just nodded and watched him turn around and leave the shop. As soon as he left, Stiles muttered something under his breath as he started walking again, but he didn't say it soft enough for me not to hear.

"Of course he can call you Lora."

I smiled softly as I thought back to the time I'd told him not to call him that. On the phone, I typed in what I wanted to tell him, then I ran after him to show it.

" _That was months ago, I didn't even know you back then."_

"So…" he looked from the phone to me.

"Yes." I said, taking the cart from him and walking away. When I looked back, he was whooping silently. I couldn't help but laugh, which immediately made him stop, his face flushing bright red.

~o~

Now, I wasn't a great cook. But when your father is out a lot, and you have to get your own dinner… you eventually get tired of microwave soup and mac 'n cheese. Besides, I don't think that neither Stiles or his father can cook properly, so they didn't have very high standards. Where I'm going with this is that they really enjoyed the spaghetti.

"Who taught you to cook?" the sheriff asked as the three of us did the washing up. The sheriff washed, I dried, Stiles put the things back.

"Delia Smith." I smiled at the confused look the two gave me. My mom had all her cookbooks, and dad refused to ever throw them away. Which is what I told them, with a mixture of loose words and gestures and I think a bit of playing hints. The sheriff looked and me and sighed. When I said the word 'dad' my voice cracked. The sheriff let out a sigh.

"I'm sorry." he said. I just let out a sigh as well. Of course he was. Everybody always is. Without realising, my hands had started shaking and I accidentally dropped a plate, which fell onto the kitchen counter with a loud clatter. Thankfully, it didn't break.

"Sorry." I muttered, about to pick it up again when Stiles stopped my hands with his. "I can-"

"It's okay." he said, gently taking my hands and leading me away from the counter. "I'll do it. You've cooked anyway, we can do the washing up." He kept talking in a hushed tone, but I couldn't make out the words anymore, it was just noise. Before I'd realised, he'd let me up the stairs and into his room, where he sat me down on his bed and crouched down next to me. Slowly, I could make out the words again. When he noticed, he smiled softly.

"How about you lie down a bit?"

"Your bed."

"Downstairs is also my couch." he said, standing up. He then slowly pushed me down on the bed. He was very tensed, like he was keeping himself ready to jump away should I decide to hit him for pushing me. Which I might've done, if I hadn't been so tired.

I watched as he stood up and left the room, looking back one time before closing the door. I wanted to call out to him and ask him to stay. I didn't want to be alone again, I didn't want to fall asleep again. But I was alone, and I fell asleep.

~o~

When I woke up, someone was pulling me back and someone was screaming. The one screaming being me.

"Lora, Lora!" Stiles, who was standing in front of me, yelled as my screaming slowly faded away. "You're okay. It was a dream." he said, nodding towards the person behind me, who then let me go. "Just a dream." Slowly but surely, I calmed down. My breathing normalised and my heartbeat slowed down again.

"Sorry." I whispered, wiping my eyes with my hands. The three of us were all a bit dazed, so it took a while for someone to speak up.

"Dad, could you…" Stiles left the question hanging. His father hesitated, but then nodded and stood up, casting one more worried glance at me before leaving the room. When he did, Stiles turned towards me, a worried expression on his face. "Are you okay?"

No, I wasn't. I was far from okay and denying it would be pointless, but still I feared how he would react when I shook my head. It didn't turn out as bad as I'd feared.

"O- okay. That's… Can I… help? With anything?" he asked, caught off guard. He hadn't expected me to admit it. "Do you… need anything?"

By that time, he was sitting next to me on the bed, and the adrenaline I'd got from my nightmare was gone, so I was tired again. Without really thinking about it, I leant towards him and put my head on his shoulder. He tensed a bit at first, his breath getting stuck in his throat, but he soon relaxed (as much as it could be expected from Stiles, anyway) and held my hand, which was still shaking.

"Okay, so, I know that it's not really your thing but… I have an appointment at the guidance counsellor tomorrow. You don't have to talk, you can just come and see how it is. I-if you want to, of course." It was silent for a while as I considered that offer.

"Okay." I eventually whispered.

"Okay… good."

"I guess that I'll have to go back to school then." I mumbled, the tired yet reluctant tone in my voice making Stiles chuckle. For a few seconds, I forgot about everything and I smiled, happy that I was back in Beacon Hills again.

"You should get some sleep." Stiles whispered, pulling me away from my moment of ignorant bliss as he slowly shifted away from me.

Because I was tired, I laid back down on the bed. When I did, the overwhelming fear of more nightmares crippled me. Stiles didn't notice however, and had started to walk towards the door. I didn't like being dependant on someone, except for my d- anyway, I didn't like it. But I wanted that moment of ignorance back, that small illusion of safety Stiles gave me.

"Stay." I whispered. He stopped in his tracks and turned around, a small frown on his face as if he were trying to figure out if I'd just really said that. "Please."

Hesitantly, he walked back, heading for his desk. There, he took his chair and placed it next to the bed. I couldn't help but smile at his actions. As far as I can recall, no more nightmares that night.

 **A/N: It's been a while, hasn't it? But here you go: the first** _ **real**_ **chapter. Lorraine will be acting different this story, because of… reasons. You'll find out. All I'm telling you is that I'm very excited for this story. Next chapter will be uploaded next week, when shit starts going down, Stiles buys a bra, and there's someone else who is, apparently, not dead!**


	3. Chapter two

**Chapter two: Hi, I'm not dead.**

By the time I woke up, the room was filled with light and Stiles was gone. On his desk there was a towel, underwear and a blue dress with a note that had: "Thank me later X" written on it in what I recognised to be Lydia's handwriting. I smiled for a bit as I took the pile and walked towards the bathroom, where (after struggling to figure out how it worked) I took a quick shower.

When I got downstairs I found Stiles doing his homework in the kitchen. He looked up in surprise as I walked into the room.

"Hey." he said, tapping with his pen on the table. "Is, eh, everything alright?" he asked, gesturing at me with the pen. "I- I didn't know your size, so I called Lydia and… I don't know if you mind or..."

"It's fine." I said, waving it off. "Thank you." I made my way over to the counter and made myself a sandwich before sitting down at the table, opposite of Stiles.

"My dad checked, your house was emptied two weeks ago. He doesn't know where all your stuff went, though." Stiles looked guilty as he spoke, as if he felt he could've done something about it. I just shrugged and took a bite of my sandwich. I could buy new stuff. He nodded and then went on with his homework, casting occasional glances at me as I sat there, thinking as I ate. What should I do? Probably call Jason, tell him I'm alright. Also check up on Lydia, so I can explain the whole Banshee thing. Also thank her for the clothes. Maybe I should also tell Scott that I'm not dead.

"What time is it?" I asked as I finished my sandwich. Stiles took out his phone and checked the screen.

"About… seven thirty. I had to pick up the clothes, so I woke up earlier. I was going to wake you up in fifteen minutes." he said offhandedly.

"What am I even supposed to do at school?" I mumbled. First I dropped out, then I disappeared for two months, and now I was just going to stroll right back in? What was I supposed to say? 'Hi everyone, surprise! Not dead!'

"Well I wouldn't go to the principal, since that's currently Allison's grandfather." Stiles said, rubbing his eyes. "You can just follow me around, I guess. I don't know. There might be people staring." I bit the inside of my lip, considering it. Then again, what were the other options? Walking would take way too long and all the people that could drive me had to go to school. So I just nodded and went back upstairs, where I tried to get ready as best as I could.

~o~

Stiles really had underestimated the situation when there might've been people staring. And I wasn't surprised. When I'd looked in the mirror that morning, I discovered that I'd lost just a bit too much weight, the dark circles under my eyes hadn't faded completely yet, and I couldn't put on any makeup to cover up those or my now almost freakishly pale skin. So yes, I wasn't surprised, but I was still very, very uncomfortable. Three months ago, I would've been annoyed, glared at the people staring, maybe even yell a thing or two. But now, it just felt so… different. I still wanted them to leave me be, but I couldn't bring up the energy to do something about it.

"You okay?" Stiles asked. I looked up from my feet at him and nodded, letting out a sigh when I saw yet again two people whispering and glancing at me. Stiles noticed and took my hand. "Come on, this way."

He led me to his locker, which was a good thing as I felt completely disorientated with all the people walking around the place. Almost seconds after we arrived at Stiles' locker, Scott ran up to us, a confused expression on his face.

"I heard people saying you were back at school." he said, eyeing me. "You okay?" I just nodded and then looked down at my feet, unsure what to do. How could the word have gone 'round so fast? Scott and Stiles seemed to have a silent conversation, which ended in Scott nodding and then walking away.

"So… ready?" Stiles asked as he closed his locker. I nodded and we went off to his first class.

~o~

Not much to my surprise, the teachers didn't really give a shit that there was an extra student present. I don't think most of them actually noticed. The only one to be a decent human being was, much to my surprise, mister Harries. I know, shocker, right? He'd talked to me for a bit as the rest of the class copied the homework from the board. Asked me if everything was alright, and if I'd considered going to the counsellor. I'd answered yes on both questions and then asked if I could get back to class. I knew that he was a druid years ago, but that didn't mean that I automatically liked the guy. Anyway, after the first few classes the lunch break came, and along with it, seeing Lydia again.

She was happy to see me at first, but soon grew upset. Lucky for both me and her, we met in the girl's bathroom, as the scene of us two first hugging and then her crying would've attracted some unwanted attention in the cafeteria..

"Where have you been? She asked, her eyes watery and her voice cracking.

"I'll explain later. Promise."

"When?"

"Tonight, after the game. I'm staying at Stiles' place."

"I know, but what happened to you?" she asked, a tear falling down her cheek as she inspected my face. "You look awful. And what's wrong with your voice?"

"Thanks." I muttered, looking to my right, seeing myself in the mirror. I did look awful. My voice was already better than yesterday, but it still hurt to talk and apparantly it still sounded off. Lydia wiped her tears away and shook her head.

"I mean, you even act different. What's wrong? Why won't you just tell me?"

"I'll see you tonight." I said, walking out of the room and leaving her there. I didn't want to answer her question, because I didn't want to admit the answer back then. But I was scared. I was scared of how everyone would react, what they would think of me. And I was terrified of having to relive the past two months by talking about them.

~o~

I succeeded in avoiding Lydia for the rest of the day, which wasn't easy. Classes flew by and before I knew it, Stiles and I were sitting in the counsellor's office. When we were sitting in the waiting room, I couldn't stop biting my nails, so Stiles had given me a piece of rope from his lacrosse stick so I could keep my hands busy. By the time Stiles' session started, I'd started my thirteenth time braiding three sections and then braiding that into one large braid. The whole session was pretty much Stiles and the counsellor talking, and me sitting next to Stiles, listening along whilst braiding.

"You know when you're drowning, you don't actually inhale until right before you black out. It's called voluntary apnea. It's like no matter how much you're freaking out, the instinct to not let any water in is so strong that you won't open your mouth until you feel like your head's exploding. But then when you finally do let it in, that's when it stops hurting.

It's not scary anymore. It's actually kind of peaceful." Stiles said. He was fixing his lacrosse stick, not looking at the counsellor as he spoke.

"Are you saying that you hoped Matt felt some peace in his last moments?" the counsellor asked. Stiles froze and looked up, exhaling.

"I don't feel sorry for him." he said.

"Can you feel sorry for the nine-year old Matt who drowned?" she then asked.

"Just because a bunch of dumbasses dragged him into a pool when he couldn't swim, doesn't really give him the right to go off killing them one by one. And by the way, my dad told me that they found a bunch of pictures of Allison on Matt's computer. And not just of her though. I mean, he photoshopped himself into these pictures. Stuff like them holding hands and kissing. You know, like he had built this whole fake relationship." he let out a sigh. "So yeah, maybe drowning when he was nine years old was what sent him off the rails, but the dude was definitely riding the crazy train."

My nose scrunched up involuntarily at the part where Matt did the photoshopping. That shit was downright creepy. Who'd spend that much time thinking about an imaginary relationship?

"One good thing came out of this, though." the counsellor said. "Your father got his job back." I froze at that. Stiles hadn't said anything about his father losing his job. Then again, we hadn't had much time for private conversation.

Stiles let out a sigh. "Yeah. Yeah, but I still feel like there's something wrong between us.I don't know. It's just, like, tension when we talk. Same thing with Scott."

"Have you talked to him since that night?" the counsellor asked.

"No, no not really. I mean, he's got his own problem to deal with, though." Stiles said. "We have, you know, been around each other, but we haven't really talked."

I looked up for a while, spotting a nameplate on the counsellor's desk. 'Miss Morell.' So that was her name. I'd forgotten.

"Scott hasn't talked to Allison either, but I think that might be more her choice, you know? Her mom dying hit her pretty hard."

"I guess you can sympathise, then." Morell said. "Have you and your father talked about your mom lately?" I couldn't help but glare at her for bringing up such a painful subject.

"No, not really." Stiles said offhandedly.

"And how are things with Jackson?" she then asked, changing the subject.

"Jackson? Jackson hasn't really been himself lately." Stiles said, letting out a small scoff. "Actually the funny thing is, as of right now, Lydia is the one who seems the most normal."

"And what about you, Stiles?" Morell asked. "Feeling some… anxiety about the championship tonight?" Stiles froze, piece of rope still in his mouth.

"What do you mean?" he asked. He then realised as he looked down at his stick. "Oh." he said, lowering it. "No, I don't actually ever play. But hey, since one of my teammates is dead, who knows, right?"

"Are you alright, Stiles?" she asked, but Stiles didn't answer. "Stiles?"

"Me? I'm fine." Stiles said. "Yeah, except for the jumpiness, little to no sleeping, and the constant, overwhelming, crushing fear that something terrible is about to happen."

"That feeling is called hypervigilance. The… persistent feeling of being under threat."

"Yeah, but it's not just a feeling ,though." Stiles said, fiddling with his hands. "It's like, it's like it's a panic attack. You know, like I can't even breathe."

"Like you're drowning?"

"Yeah."

Well, if you're drowning, and you're waiting until that very last moment. What happens if you don't open your mouth? If you choose not to let the water in?"

Stiles frowned at her. "Well, you do anyway, it's a reflex." Stiles said.

"But, if you hold off, until that reflex kicks in, that means you have more time, right?"

"Not much."

"But more time to fight your way to the surface."

"I guess."

"More time to be rescued?"

Stiles scoffed. "More time to be in agonising pain. And did you forget about the part where you feel like your head's exploding?" he said, his voice growing a bit louder at the end.

"If it's about survival, isn't a little agony worth it?" Morell asked.

"And what if it just gets worse?" Stiles asked. "What if it's agony now and… and just hell later on?"

"Then think about something Winston Churchill once said." Morell said, leaning forward. "If you're going through hell…"

" _I don't want to!" I yelled, getting out of dad's car. "School's a total hell, dad." Dad just laughed and shook his head at me._

" _You'll be surprised how much things you learn in school you'll use when you're a protector. Besides, remember what Winston Churchill once said: If you're going through hell…" he looked at me in expectation._

"Keep going." I whispered, earning a smile from Morell.

"Very good." she said, standing up from her chair. "I guess I'll be seeing you here, Lorraine?" I nodded and she led us out of the room. It was only then that I realised that at some point in the session, I'd grabbed a hold of Stiles' hand, and neither of us had let go.

"Sorry." I mumbled, letting go. He looked down in surprise.

"O-oh. No, it's fine." he said. "So… do you want to come watch the game tonight? It's the season finale, you know." I smiled and nodded.

~o~

"... today we celebrate our independence day!" coach yelled, all the boys in the changing room but Stiles cheering and throwing their arms up in the air. I shook my head and looked down. The Independence Day speech, really?

"Well said, coach." a voice said from behind coach. An elderly man stepped into the room. "Personally I would've chosen something with some more historical value, but there's no denying your passion." he said. "And while I haven't been here long, there's no denying my pride in having a winning team for this school." Urgh, just hearing him talk made me want to cut my ears off. Not because his voice wasn't pleasing to listen to, no the exact opposite was the problem. From the things I'd heard about Gerard Argent, you'd expect a tough, foul man. The truth was much worse. He didn't do all those horrible things himself, he got someone else to do it for him. I felt my claws grow out, and in order to control myself I clenched my fist, drawing blood from my hands.

By focusing too much on keeping control, I missed the rest of Argent's speech, only catching the last words: "murder them."

"You heard the man!" coach yelled. "Asses on the field!" The team let out a cheer and started running out of the room.

"Good luck." I said to Stiles with a smile on my face.

"I never play, remember?" he said. I just shrugged and handed him a small pouch with my not-bleeding hand. "What's this?"

"Mountain ash. If Jackson comes towards you, open the pouch and throw it up into the air. That should stop him." He nodded and thanked me.

"Hey Stillinski!" coach yelled. "You can kiss your girlfriend later! Ass on the-"

"Field! Yeah, I know." Stiles said, muttering an apology before he left.

~o~

Just before the game was about to start, Stiles ran onto the field.

"Oh no, what's my son doing on the field?" the sheriff said, shaking his head.

"Because he's on the team?" Scott's mom, Melissa, said. The sheriff looked up in both surprise and realisation at that.

"You're right. My son's on the team! He's on-" I grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him down to his seat, which he had been slowly standing up from, to stop him from embarrassing both himself and Stiles.

"Thanks." he mumbled, letting out a laugh. The whistle blew and the game started.

Oh I wish it hadn't. It was going horribly, the entire team was fumbling around and Stiles was no exception to that.

First, he caught the ball on accident. Which wouldn't have been a bad thing if the other team hadn't tackled him to the ground immediately after. The crowd let out a collective "ooh…" as they winced in pain.

"He's probably just warming up." Melissa said. But no he wasn't. Just a minute later, the ball was lying right in front of him, but he couldn't get it on his stick, and it got snatched away by the other team.

"He's just nervous, that's all." Lydia said. I frowned and leaned forward, looking past the sheriff and Melissa, spotting her sitting next to Melissa. "Hi." she said, smiling a bit tensely at me. I just smiled back and then focused on the game.

The third time Stiles messed up was when he got passed the ball and it hit his helmet, the crowd booing at him. The four of us had our heads in our hands. Then, the whistle came. Time out.

"Asses over here!" coach yelled, more angry than usual. I stood up from my place and walked down the tribune, towards the bench where the team was gathering.

"What is happening?" I asked Scott, who was beyond frustrated.

"Gerard is going to use Jackson if I don't help him catch Derek." he said, just as Isaac sat down next to him. "You came to help?" he asked in surprise. Isaac smirked at us.

"I came to win." he said. He and Scott then continued to talk about a plan, but I didn't listen anymore. There was a ringing in my ears, and I knew what that meant. Someone was about to die before their time.

"I gotta go." I mumbled, standing up and running away, behind the tribunes and into the forest. Several people yelled my name, but I kept running until I was a safe distance away from the field. Then, I let my wings come out and flew off.

~o~

I didn't have to fly that far, just to the nature preserve. Which didn't really comfort me as bad things tended to happen there. Even if I hadn't known where I had to go, I could've just followed the screaming. I landed in a small clearing and saw what was happening.

Two teenagers were sitting on the ground. One blonde girl with an arrow stuck in her leg, and one buff black guy with one stuck in his chest. Opposite of them stood Allison with her bow aimed at them.

"Allison, stop." I said, making the girl look at me like she'd seen a ghost, but she didn't lower her bow. "Whatever you're trying to do, stop."

"Mind your own business, Lorraine." she said, glaring at me. "Or I'll shoot you too." When I kept walking towards the scene, she aimed her bow at me. I jumped up and flapped my wings, so I shot forward, my feet almost touching the ground. By the time Allison readjusted her aim, I was standing in front of the two teenagers, my wings spread to shield them.

"This is my business." I said. "No one is dying, not on my watch." I barely blinked as she fired an arrow into my wing. It was like the pain was immediately numbed before it could fully set. "Put the bow down, Allison." My heart skipped a beat as she readjusted her aim, which was now directed at my heart. When shifted I could survive almost anything, but a clear shot in the heart could very well kill me.

"No second chances." Allison said, a cold look in her eyes. Just when I thought she was going to release the arrow, a gun was fired, and her bow got shattered to pieces. We both looked towards the person who'd fired the gun as he stepped into view.

"Let them go, Chris." I said. "They're no use, they won't betray their Alpha." I turned my head to look at them. "At least not any more than they've already done." The two looked down in shame.

"I have my orders." Chris said.

I turned my head again. "So do I. And trust me, my boss isn't a sweetheart."

"Well neither is mine." he said.

"What were you even going to do with them?" I asked, letting out a scoff. "They haven't harmed anybody. What happened to "we hunt those who hunt us"? Or did that become: "We kill everyone who opposes our grandfather"?" I smirked at him. "What would that be in french? Let them go, Chris. Final chance." Chris seemed to consider the offer, and finally nodded, despite Allison's protests. I slowly lowered my wings and turned towards the two teenagers.

"Go, run. Hide if you want to. Just don't show your faces again." I said. They stood up and started running away, not once looking back. When I turned around, Allison was glaring at me. Not that I cared. "You're going to regret this, Allison." I said, letting out a sigh before glaring back at her. "And don't think that just because you regret it I'll let you get away with this easily." And with that, I flew off.

~o~

When I got back to the game, there was chaos. People were running all over the place, but a few were running to one place in particular, where someone was lying still on the field, and I joined them. Arriving there, I saw that the person was Jackson. What the hell?

"Jackson?" Lydia yelled. I looked up and saw her running towards the group. "What's happened to Jackson? Jackson!" I pulled my attention away from Lydia and back to Jackson, who still wasn't moving. I sat down on my knees and tilted his head to the side, putting my fingers on his neck to look for a pulse.

"Nothing." I looked at his chest, just to make sure, but that wasn't moving either. "Someone call an ambulance! No pulse and not breathing!" Someone yelled that they were on it. Next to me, Melissa sat down on the ground.

"No pulse?" she asked, examining him.

"Nothing." I said, noticing blood on his nails. I started inspecting for injuries, and found… well a lot, as I lifted up his shirt. He'd put his claws into his own body.

"Oh my God, there's blood." Lydia said, distressed. "There's a lot of blood." Melissa and I ignored her as we started performing CPR on Jackson. Melissa doing the heart massage as I tilted up his head, counting along with Melissa so I didn't mess up the timing when attempting to get his heart starting with mouth to mouth. In the heat of the moment, I lost awareness of my surroundings until the ambulance came, the medics taking it over from us. Someone slowly pulled me away from the whole scene, and it took a while to register that they were talking to me.

"Have you seen Stiles?" the sheriff asked, sounding distressed. Now I was the one in need of CPR.

"He's gone?"

"No one has seen him since the end of the game." Scott said. I shook my head and took in my surroundings. I was in the boys locker room, together with the sheriff, Scott, and Isaac. The sheriff shook his head at me. I'd been really out of it, hadn't I?

"Anyway, I have to go to the hospital for Jackson, I've got an ABP out for Stiles, and his jeep is still in the parking lot so that means…" the sheriff paused. "I don't know what that means."

I let out a sigh. "That means he either left out of his own will, knowing he wouldn't go far, or that someone took him." My heart started beating faster, I could feel myself growing angrier.

"Yeah…" the sheriff said, looking down. "If any of you see him-"

"We'll let you know." Scott said, nodding at him. The sheriff nodded back and left the room.

I couldn't keep my anger in any longer. "I am going to rip their lungs out!" I yelled, kicking against a locker and surprising the two boys. Also coach, who was now standing behind me.

"Easy on the lockers, Hield." he said, patting me on the back before turning to Scott. "McCall, I want you on the team. But I can't keep you on the team if you don't get your grades up." I doubt that I'd ever heard coach talk so quietly.

"I know." Scott said, nodding. "And I will."

"All right." coach said, nodding and turning to walk away for a moment until he turned around again. "I know that I yell at you guys a lot, but it's not like I hate you." he let out a scoff. "Well, I kind of hate Greenberg, but that's different. I mean, it's Greenberg." Isaac and I started smirking at that. "I'm just saying: we… I need you on the team. So get those grades up." Scott assured him that he would and coach then walked away, leaving the three of us as the last ones in the room.

"Was that everyone?" Scott asked. Isaac nodded.

"I think so." Scott then ripped out the door to Stiles' locker and took out a shirt and a shoe. "Are we going to track him by scent?" he asked, frowning as he got the shoe pushed into his hands. "Then how come I get the shoe?"

The three of us froze as a door closed and Derek stepped into the room. He first looked at me, silently asking if I was okay. When I nodded, so did he before getting down to business.

"We need to talk." he said. Behind him, Peter Hale stepped into the room.

"All of us." he said, a smirk growing on his face.

"Holy shit." Scott said, looking at him. I just let out a deep sigh and sat down on a bench, irritated that they were delaying our search for Stiles. "What the hell is this?" Scott asked, looking at Peter.

"You know, I thought the same thing when I saw you talking with Gerard outside the sheriff's station." Derek said in an accusing tone.

"Oh, okay, hold on:" Scott said, shaking his head a little. "He threatened to kill my mom! And I had to get close to him, what else was I supposed to do?"

"I'm gonna go with Scott, on this one." Peter said, looking at Isaac. "I mean, have you seen his mom? She's gorgeous." A small smile crept on my face as both Derek and Scott yelled "shut up" at him at the same time. Isaac, on the other hand, was just confused.

"Who's he?" he asked both me and Scott.

"It's Peter, Derek's uncle. A little while ago he tried to kill us all, then we set him on fire, and then Derek slashed his throat." Derek rolled his eyes at that, but Peter just held up his hand and said "Hi." with a smile on his face. Isaac gave him a smile back that soon fell.

"That's good to know." he muttered.

"How is he alive?" Scott asked, still confused.

"Look, the short version is: he knows how to stop Jackson." Derek said. I shook my head at that.

"I know how to do that too, and that's no explanation." I said.

"Besides, that's not very helpful as Jackson is dead." Isaac added. Peter's expression fell and Derek frowned at us.

"What?"

"Yeah, Jackson's dead. It happened on the field." Scott said. Derek and Peter looked at each other in worry.

"Why is no one taking this as good news?" Isaac asked, confused.

"Because if Jackson's dead, it didn't just happen." Peter said, slowly walking further into the room. "Gerard wanted it to happen. We need to figure out why, and our window of opportunity is closing."

"Hold on, why didn't you tell us this?" Scott asked, turning to me.

"Hey, I was a bit distracted by the fact, of which I hope I needn't remind you, that Stiles is missing!" I took a deep breath. "But if you really want all the information you need: Lydia. We need Lydia. Kanima's become Kanima's because they have no sense of home, thus no sense of a pack, which is why it seeks a master instead. We need to remind him where his home is, so we need someone he loves, and here I point, yet again, to Lydia. Get the two of them together, and bam: Kanima has his home, no longer needs his master." They all stared at me in shock. "What? Like hell I'm gonna let you solve this problem."

"Well that's all very nice, but there's still that part where Jackson is dead." Peter said.

"Yeah, but is he?" I said, about to take out my phone when I realised I didn't have one anymore. Showing them the pages of our besiary would be much easier (and less painful for my throat), but explaining would have to do. "Anyway. Think of the Kanima as a caterpillar. It lives, it avenges, maybe an occasional murder, who cares anyway. Then, the caterpillar turns into a cocoon, it's body turning into complete goo and then after a while, into a butterfly. The Kanima is like that, with wings and everything."

"So… Jackson isn't dead…" Scott said, pausing. "He's turning into a cocoon?"

"Righty ho. Luckily for us, he doesn't turn into goo. If he's pulled out of his state before he can start transforming, then we won't have a flying lizard roaming Beacon Hills." They all stared at me. "Yeah, I know, it must be such a life changer to actually have someone who knows their shit and wont turn on you!" I said, clapping my hands together. "Now, do whatever you like, but I'm going to check up with the sheriff, see if he's found Stiles yet." And with that, I left the room.

~o~

The sheriff wasn't at the hospital anymore, or at least that's what Melissa said when I called her using Stiles' phone. After that I called the sheriff's station, but he wasn't there either. I figured that he either must be in town, looking for Stiles, or at home. There was no way I was going to search the whole of Beacon Hills, so I went back to his home.

I didn't want to scare anyone, so I walked the last part instead of just landing in the middle of the street. I… hadn't quite expected to see Stiles walking down the street.

"Stiles?" I yelled, wanting to make sure it was him. With a confused look, he turned around. I let out a sigh in relief and ran towards him, immediately embracing him in a hug. "I was worried sick." I whispered, letting go of him. His cheek had a large red bruise on it and his lip was bleeding.

"I'm fine." he said before I could say anything. I clenched my jaw shut as I traced a finger over his cheek. "Lora, I said I'm fine." he said, his voice stronger now.

"Was it Gerard?" I asked. He didn't say anything, which was an answer by itself. "Let's get you home." I said, and we started walking. Even though Stiles wasn't missing anymore, I couldn't shake off the bad feeling in my stomach. It might well be that Lydia was still coming and then I'd have to explain everything. On top of that, who knows what was going to happen with Jackson and the Argents?

I just really couldn't have waited a few more days to return, couldn't I?

 **A/N: Okay, I know that this chapter was longer than usual, but the bit where's Stiles is at the counsellor barely contains anything original, so I wanted to make up for it. I really wanted that part to be in it, and I did my best to keep out some other unnecessary dialogues from the episode so it didn't get too out of hand.**

 **Anyway, thank you all so much for reading (as usual) and I'll see you next week!**

 **~Lilly**


	4. Chapter three

**Chapter three: Nobody has told anyone anything**

We walked up the stairs in silence. Just before we'd checked downstairs, but the sheriff wasn't there. Then we heard his voice coming from Stiles' room.

"Come on Stiles, where the hell are you?" he said. I nudged Stiles towards the door opening.

He looked back at me almost desperately before walking into the room. "Right here." He and his dad walked towards each other, but instead of hugging his son, the sheriff took his son's chin and turned his head to look at the bruise. "Dad, I'm okay." Stiles insisted. "Just a couple of kids from the other team. Y'know, they were pissed about losing and I, I was mouthing off… next thing I know-"

"Who was it?" the sheriff said, his voice close to yelling.

"Dad I didn't even see them real-"

"I want descriptions."

"Dad, come on, it's not even that bad." Stiles said, but his father was beyond angry.

"I'm gonna call that school, I'm gonna personally go down there and-"

"Dad!" Stiles yelled. He let out a sigh. "I- I said I was okay…" His father sighed and calmed down a bit before pulling Stiles into a hug. I smiled and took out Stiles' phone to send a text to Scott: _Found him, he's okay. -L_ When I lowered the phone, both Stiles and his father were looking at me. "Right, sorry." I said, handing the phone over to Stiles. "I still don't know where mine is." Almost immediately after I finished my sentence, Stiles slapped himself on the forehead.

"Damn it! I- I completely forgot, wait." he said, turning around to his desk and opening the top drawer, pulling out my phone. "Here." he said, handing it to me.

"How…" I asked, pushing on the home button. It was fully charged.

"I found it during one of our search parties." the sheriff said. "Do you two need anything?"

"I'm good, thanks." I said, sitting down on the edge of Stiles' bed. Stiles shook his head and his father then left. Once he did, I stood up from the bed and walked over to the door, putting the desk chair under it so no one could open it.

"Why are y- woah." Stiles said, his eyes wide as I let my wings come out.

"Allison shot my left wing." I explained, flexing my muscles a bit. "I don't know why, but they take longer to heal than the rest of my body." Stiles nodded, and I could see his mind coming up with possible explanations. "I… can't really see them properly, could you… check? If it's healed?" I asked, spreading my left wing.

"Yeah," Stiles said, nodding. "Yeah, sure." he walked over to me and took a look at the spot I was pointing at. "It looks pretty healed to me…" he said, holding up his hand and reaching out before stopping. "Can I…?" I just nodded and soon felt his fingers tracing the wound. It didn't hurt, so that was a good sign.

"Why did Allison shoot you?"

"Let's just say that I got in her way. I'll explain it later."

He nodded before changing the subject. "How do your wings even work? Like, where do they go?"

"They just shrink back." I said with a shrug. "A bit like Scott's teeth or sudden amount of facial hair. Only those don't leave two holes in the back of his shirts." Stiles chuckled at that, and he was just about to say something when someone knocked on the door.

"Dad, were fine!" Stiles yelled, an annoyed look on his face. More knocks. "Dad!" he yelled again, looking more panicked now. I stepped back and let my wings shrink back. Once they were gone, Stiles walked towards the door, put away the chair and opened it. Behind the door was Lydia.

"Lora said she was going to explain things to me." she said, tears in her eyes. "I could really use some explanations right now."

~o~

Stiles and I were sitting next to each other on his bed, Lydia opposite of us on the chair.

"Okay, since we might not have much time, I'm just going to say it:" I started. "The supernatural is real. Scott is a werewolf. Jackson wanted to be one too. He got the bite that should have turned him into one but instead he became a kanima, a homicidal lizard version of a werewolf. He's an orphan, I'm sure you know that." Lydia nodded. "Because of that he has no idea of who he is and what home is." I paused for a bit to see if she was still keeping up. There were still tears in her eyes and she looked a bit shocked, but something told me she'd expected this, so I continued. "I'm a protector, we protect people. The Argents are hunters, they hunt the supernatural. Allison's grandfather took control of Jackson and is now using him. The only way to stop Jackson is to give him his sense of home back." I stopped there, but Lydia didn't seem to get it so Stiles jumped in.

"She means you. Jackson really loved you, and part of him still does. You need to remind him of that." Lydia seemed to think about it for a moment, debating whether she really _could_ bring Jackson back.

"Okay." Lydia said, determined. She had made her decision. "I'll do it."

"Great, then we're done." I said, clapping my hands together and standing up. "Let's go." But Stiles pulled me back down.

"No, Lora." he said, shaking his head. "Not done. I… look, I know that you'd rather not talk about what happened to you, but we need to know. You said so yourself, secrets never help."

"Why won't you just tell us?" Lydia pleaded when I didn't say anything.

"Because if I can't even forgive myself, how can I expect you to?" I said, fighting off the tears in my eyes. God I felt like a stereotypical mess. Then I realised that almost every teenager ever is a stereotypical mess in some way. Still, I dreaded telling them.

"Just…" Stiles put his hand over mine. "Just start at the beginning, okay?" I took a deep breath, nodded, and started talking.

"When I walked into the woods, I found a man, Alex, waiting for me. He said some stuff, I can't even remember what, but it ended in me refusing to go with him and he knocking me out. That's one of the things these are good for, by the way." I said, holding up my hand. I'd let my claws grow out. They were like sharp pointed human nails, only black.

"Okay, that's…" Lydia said, squinting her eyes at them.

"Used for scratching, or, when I set them deep enough into someone's skin: knocking them out… or killing them." I quickly pulled them back. "He brought me to the Base. It's a training camp and base for our 'kind'. Not very big, since there aren't that many, but still. It was like a motel." I cleared my throat. "Anyway, when I got there, I was the last one they needed before they could "go public" as they liked to call it. Whenever a state gets enough Ravens to cover the major towns or counties, they can reveal themselves to the supernatural world.

"That's…" Lydia started."

I sighed. "Weird, I know, but I don't make up the rules. Anyway, the leader at that time wanted to train me as quickly as possible. She… was a tyrant, really. Hungry for power. The stronger we were, the stronger she got. A Raven gets stronger by using the lifeforce of the people it kills, and also a bit by training. It's actually a lot more complicated, there's rules, but let's just keep it like that. So, the leader, Cassandra, figured that the quickest way for me to get stronger would be… y'know."

"You were forced to kill people?" Lydia asked, her voice cracking. I nodded and then continued.

"I think around one hundred, but to be honest I lost count. It's like…those months were all one big blur."

"I'm sorry." Lydia said, and I knew she meant it. I didn't know if I should continue, because both of them already looked upset.

"It's okay, go on." Stiles said, his voice soft.

"Cassandra was convinced that what she was doing was just. She took criminals with the death sentence over from jails all over California. And… sometimes I didn't mind killing them. But our justice system is flawed. Amongst all those criminals were innocent people."

"You don't know that." Lydia said in attempt to make me feel better.

I shook my head. "But I do. Whenever a Raven, it's what I am, kills someone it sees their entire life. Including the part that should've come after I killed them. My brain had to process hundreds of year of living in just one day. And I… couldn't take it. I became a zombie, barely aware of what was happening. But I know that some of those people were innocent. That's something you can't ever forget." I stopped talking when Stiles suddenly stood up and left the room. Then he came back with a roll of toilet paper.

"Sorry, I don't have tissues." he said, handing it to me. I hadn't even noticed the tears on my face, or the snot in my nose. Oh gross.

"Shit." I muttered, first wiping away my tears and then blowing my nose. "Thanks. Anyway, then it stopped all of a sudden. Alex, the guy that… kidnapped me, had overthrown Cassandra. I started training my skills soon after that. At first it felt like the first weeks didn't even happen. Then, slowly, I started remembering. Just some parts here and there, but enough. Enough to hate myself for killing those people and enough for me to never be able to forgive myself for actually thinking that it was just for some of them." I took another piece of paper and blew my nose again. "I wanted to go back here, bu-"

"Oh no, no, no, we are not doing that!" Stiles said. "Don't you dare leave again, don't- don't you dare." he'd stood up from the bed and was now crouching down in front of me, taking my head between his hands and forcing me to look at him.

"I'm not going to." I meant it, I didn't want to leave, but there was one thing… "Why don't you hate me right now?"

Stiles shook his head. "You still don't get it, do you? Lora, I could never hate you. Even if I tried, I could never ever hate you. And you really need to start getting that by yourself now, because apparently, I can't get the message through."

"Oh just kiss already." Lydia muttered. Stiles and I turned abruptly turned our heads. I gave her a warning look, but I fear that it came over as pleading. "What?" she asked, as if she hadn't said anything. She held up her phone. "Scott texted, we need to go."

~o~

We were racing towards the Warehouse District, using address Scott had texted Stiles, together with a little bit of guidance from Lydia.

"Here?" Stiles yelled as we raced towards the building.

"Around the corner." Lydia said, sounding pretty determined. She was sitting in the back and leaning forward. "Through the wall." she said once we got around the corner.

"Wh- what?" Stiles yelled.

"You heard her." I said.

"Oh, come on." Stiles said, driving the car back so we could gain some speed. "Here we go…"

There was a loud crash as we drove through the wall, not stopping until we hit something. Or someone. I'd unknowingly closed my eyes, and when I opened them I didn't see anything in front of the car.

"Did we hit him?" Stiles asked, his eyes still half closed. I looked around and spotted Scott smiling at us in amazement. I let out a sigh in relief, but that relief didn't last long when Jackson, in Kanima form, jumped onto the hood of the car. Stiles let out a loud scream and followed me as I opened the door and left the car.

"Jackson?" Lydia yelled. Unlike me and Stiles, she ran towards Jackson, who held up one arm, ready to claw her face off. Lydia quickly held up a small glinstering item. A key? Jackson tilted his head as he looked at it, slowly lowering his arm. He then started shifting back to human form, only part of his skin covered in scales was left when he took the item, which was indeed a key, from Lydia. He nodded and then completely lowered his arm, now fully back to human form. He took a few steps back, and before I could register what was happening, Derek shot past me and pushed his claws into Jackson's stomach.

"Wait!" I yelled, but it was too late. Behind Jackson, Peter jumped into view and put his claws in Jackson's back. Together, he and Derek lifted Jackson up in the air, blood seeping down his stomach. When they let go, Jackson was struggling to breathe. Lydia ran towards him, slowly lowering him to the ground so he wouldn't fall.

"D- do you still…" Jackson asked, choking on his own breath.

"I do." Lydia said quickly, tears in her eyes. Jackson stared at her with wide eyes and Lydia nodded. "I do still love you. I do." Jackson nodded, his eyes fluttering close before he fell forwards, his head landing on Lydia's shoulder. The girl cried and put one hand in Jackson's hair, mourning. I turned away from the scene, seeing who else was there. Scott, Derek, Peter… Isaac had bloodstains on his shirt. Then there were Chris and Allison, both shocked with what had just happened. At the moment, I was too concerned with what had happened to Isaac. I walked towards him and pointed at the stains.

"Who did that?" I had an idea or two. He was reluctant to answer, but after a glare he did.

"Allison."

Oh that girl was getting hell.

"Where's Gerard?" my head shot towards Allison as the words left her mouth.

"He can't be far." Chris said.

Lydia had laid Jackson down on the ground and was now standing next to his body, slowly turning around and walking back to the group. I ran over to her and gave her a hug, my eyes fixed on Jackson, wondering why he still had his claws out. Then the claws moved, scratching the ground just a bit.

"Lydia." I said, letting go and pulling the girl off me so I could turn her around and show her. "Look." Jackson's wounds were healing, and fast. Then he woke up with a gasp, his eyes shining cold blue. "You did it." I said, putting a hand on Lydia's shoulder.

"What did she do?" Derek asked. I turned around with a smile on my face.

"She turned him into a werewolf." Behind me there was a loud roar. Jackson was standing again, and Lydia ran towards him to hug him. It was then that I realised Jackson was probably completely naked.

"Ugh." I said, my face scrunching up in disgust. "Someone get him some pants, please."

Even Jackson laughed at that.

~o~

Okay, so Jackson was no longer a Kanima, he'd made things up with Lydia, and Allison was regretting almost killing a few people. Happy end, right? Oh hell no. When I said I was going to give Allison hell for what she'd done (and what she almost did), I meant it. And just because she and Scott came over so she could apologise didn't mean that I'd forgive her instantly.

"Like hell you're sorry." I said, trying my best not to yell. "You know you were one arrow away from killing that guy in the woods? What did he do to you? I know what it's like to lose a parent, and I'm not saying that I'm a saint either. God knows I wanted to kill Kate, but that didn't mean I'd chop down everyone in my way!"

"She said she was sorry!" Scott defended.

"Sorry won't cut it!" I snapped, after which I calmed down a bit. I then let out a scoff and looked at Allison. "You really don't get it, do you? When I saved that kid in the forest, I didn't just save him. I saved you. Because even when you think it's justified at that time, killing someone affects you in the end." I felt tired after letting all of my cropped up anger out. "Don't tell me that you're sorry." I said, calm now. "Show me. Make me feel like I made the right choice not killing you."

Allison and Scott left after that, and I was so exhausted that I went upstairs to sleep immediately, promising myself that I'd find a way to convince Stiles that I wouldn't die from sleeping on a couch. Stiles said something about having a ton of homework and wished me goodnight.

~o~

When I woke up the next morning, I instantly noticed that someone had me grabbed from behind. Without doing so much as think about it, I jammed my elbow back, breaking myself loose, and grabbed for the knife I kept next to the mattress. When I recognised the person who was now lying on the floor to be Stiles, I let out a sigh.

"Morning sleeping beauty." I let out a laugh as he groaned, both from pain and waking up so suddenly.

"What the- oh god." His face flushed bright red. "Oh God, I'm so-"

I laughed. "It's okay, Stiles. Sharing a bed won't impregnate me, you know." He grew even redder at that. I chuckled. "I'm seriously, it's fine. How'd you sleep?"

His face went blank. "I… actually, good." he frowned at that. "I haven't slept in weeks."

My eyes widened. "You haven't slept at all?"

"Barely." he rubbed his eyes.

"Maybe it's because you're sleeping on a couch…" I smirked at him when he rolled his eyes. "We could always just share, since you won't let me sleep on the couch anyway."

"Wh- wo- you- sh" he spluttered. "Uhm, yeah, sure, fine." He quickly stood up and then frowned at me. "Where did you get that knife from?"

I looked down at the knife, which was still in my hand. "Knife shop?" I attempted, and failed. But at least it made him laugh.

~o~

Without either of us even proposing it, Stiles and I had fallen into a routine of sorts. We'd wake up, get ready, have breakfast, go to school (where I now had only a few classes to get used to school again, I'd start with the rest after summer break. I also had tea time with Morell every two days), then we'd either go home or I'd watch the lacrosse practice (coach insisted on training even after the end of the season) Once home, he'd go off and study whilst I mostly arranged stuff for both the protector and Raven community. I had also forced Stiles to let me teach him how to cook, but those days usually ended up with burnt food and cuts in Stiles' fingers because he wasn't able to focus.

I called Jason, telling him what had happened and asking him if I could have some of my stuff back (Lydia had given me some clothes, but those weren't really my thing. Bit too short)

So yeah. I would've said that life was going back to normal, but we all know that's not true.

Especially since I got a call from Derek, followed by a picture, a symbol of something I'd only ever heard of before. Which was kind of a bad timing, as I was on a plane when I got it. Heading to Houston, Protector Headquarters. (Or PH as we like to call it)

"I'll be back in two weeks, just… hold on. I'll see if I can send a man over, but I doubt it. The Assembly is a pretty big thing, usually no one is allowed to miss it."

"Any advice?" Derek asked.

"Keep your betas safe. And I don't just mean Isaac, I mean every person you've turned. They'll make you kill them. And if you kill Isaac, you know I'm going to kick your ass." I said, squinting at a woman who'd been staring at me for the past thirty seconds or so. She quickly turned her head.

"Yeah, thanks." Derek said, pausing for a while. "Be safe out there, alright?"

"Well I was planning on going skydiving without the parachute, but I guess I can rearrange my plans."

"You know what I meant."

"Of course I do." I said, rolling my eyes. "See ya, Derek."

~o~

The actual assembly part of the Assembly was about to begin. We were in the theatre hall of the hotel where the Assembly was held every year. (It was a very fancy hotel) I was about to go on the stage to speak, something that my dad had always done in the past. Jason was standing next to me, his hand on my shoulder to comfort me.

"Just go up there, tell them what happened, and answer their questions. When things go wrong, I'll jump in." he said, patting me on the back as a sign that I could go. I let out a sigh and walked onto the stage, causing silence to fall in the room. I walked over to the microphone and started the 'speech' I'd prepared.

"Just before my father and I moved back to Beacon Hills, we encountered a group of men that were shooting at and capturing a Raven. We freed the bird, which killed the men. After that, the Raven attacked me. With the help of a retired druid, my father managed to save me. I assume you've all read what happened in Beacon Hills afterwards in the last email. Anyway, in the end my father was shot by Kate Argent." As soon as I spoke her name, the crowd started talking and yelling. I could make out a few words, all threats to the family. "We have already discussed this matter and we will not start any fights with the Argents. Kate acted on her own, not because she was ordered to do so. She went against her code. We must be better than that and stick to ours." There was still some whispering going on, but when I looked at Jason he signed me a thumbs-up, so I could continue.

"How did you survive?" someone from the crowd yelled. I let out an exasperated sigh and rolled my eyes.

"Yes, I was getting to that, thanks." A few people chuckled. "We have concluded that a Raven can not only kill with his claws, but also induce fainting. Another thing it can do is turn a human into something resembling a Raven. We haven't come up with a name for that one just quite yet. A Raven will gift a person these powers as an act of gratitude. Whether that act is wanted or not, I don't think it cares." More chuckles. "If a person survives the next few weeks, it's first shift will occur when… someone in their area dies before their time." I took a deep breath before continuing.

"A human Raven's job is, much like a Raven's, to balance life and death. Usually this is by preventing someone from dying before their time, and sometimes… killing them after it. Like a Raven, a human Raven can use it's claws to kill or induce fainting, but he or she can not pass on their powers. They are not a threat, and like to lay low, which is why we haven't heard of them until now." I let out a deep sigh. "Any questions?" A few people raised their hands.

"On the left, purple shirt?" I said, pointing at a woman who stood up.

"I'm sorry, but how do we even know if we can trust the Ravens? You're one of them, you could be lying." The question triggered a lot of booing (I'd lie if I said we were a mature community), but also some cautious nods among the crowd.

"Yes, I am a Raven. But I was trained to be a Protector, and I still am. I understand that the thought of an army consisting of almost immortal winged superhumans of death can be a little intimidating, but our state has barely enough to cover the major towns, so we kind of have our hands full there. It's rare that a Raven goes against their instinct, the impulse to keep balance is too strong."

"Take that, Susan!" someone in the crowd yelled. I quickly put a hand in front of my mouth and masked my laugh with a loud cough. After that, I pointed at another person with a question.

"So there's some sort of community?" I nodded. "How does it work?"

"Well, each state works relatively independently and usually has one leader who assigns the rest of the Ravens their towns." Three more people raised their hands up in the air. "I got assigned Beacon Hills, yes." Three hands went back down again. "Each Raven does it's duty, which I already mentioned before. Next question?" I asked, pointing at a man in a white blouse.

"Where were you the last two months?"

"I was training. Until recently, contact with the outside world was prohibited at the Base."

It felt like the questions went on and on and on, but when I got back to my room, only an hour had passed. Some of the questions I hadn't answered, others I lied, a few Jason answered for me. Everything turned out alright in the end, or as alright as it could get. Someone had even asked if I could shift, and (after some encouragement from Jason) I did. Almost everyone was looking at me in awe and I felt like I was the newest phone in a shop, with everyone staring at me. "Can you fly?" "How fast?" "What about carrying someone with you?" Were three of the many questions people came up with. In the back, I could see the bestiary department furiously taking notes and making sketches.

I let out a sigh and tossed around in my bed. These two weeks were going to be hell.

 **A/N: I'm not so sure about this chapter… It's a bit all over the place and there's a lot of information so sorry for that. I've edited this one four times and even asked a friend to edit it. It's a lot better than it used to be, but still, my apologies. Next chapter should be a lot better. I'm not spoiling too much, but there's a lot of snippets in Lorraine's life which I found very fun to write.**

 **Anyways, thanks for reading (as always) and I'll see you in the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	5. Chapter four

Chapter four: Countdown to Hell(ish)

31 days

Planes suck. The seats are crammed, the people are annoying and somehow I always manage to sit next to someone who chews with their mouth open. Needlessly to say, I was glad when I finally got off my plane. After picking up my luggage I went outside, where Stiles was already waiting for me.

"Hey, there you are!" he said as I walked out of the building. He ran over to me and took over a suitcase.

"How was it?" he asked.

"Could've been worse, I guess." I said with a shrug. "Did you manage without me? Or should I expect a mess when I step through the front door?"

"Ha ha, very funny." he said as we headed for the jeep. "Where did you get all that stuff from?" he asked, indicating at my other suitcase and backpack. When I left, I'd only had one suitcase.

"Oh, Jason brought some of my stuff. Now I can finally stop borrowing from Lydia." I was relieved about that last bit. As pretty as her clothes were, and as generous as she'd been, Lydia's style wasn't mine, and most of her clothes were a bit on the short side. "Though perhaps I'll keep that black dress you liked." I said, smirking as Stiles' face flushed a bright red.

"I- bh- what dress?" he asked, taking out his car keys so he wouldn't have to look at me.

"Don't think I didn't see you stare, Stillinski." I teased. "Speaking of staring, nice hair." He'd started growing out his hair a while ago, but he usually wore it flat down. Now he had it standing up, and I won't lie: he looked pretty damn hot if you asked me. I smiled as the red withdrew from his face, leaving only a blush. He muttered a thanks and then opened the jeep.

~o~

28 days

Stiles and I were having a movie night. He had somehow convinced me to watch Star Wars. I'll tell you how that conversation went down.

"Are you sure we can trust Deaton?" he asked for what must've been the tenth time. I let out an audible sigh. "Oh come on, you know he's shady. I don't like that Obi Wan thing he's got going on." I turned my head towards him and raised an eyebrow.

"Obi who?" I asked. His expression fell and he looked at me as if I'd committed blasphemy.

"Tell me you've seen Star Wars."

"Is that the one with the guy with the pointy ears and the…" I raised my hand in the air, my middle and ring finger parted.

"No, that's Spock from Star Trek." he said, sounding disappointed. He then clapped his hands together. "Okay, we're going to watch the movies. Movie night. Starting now."

I looked at my watch with a frown on my face. "Stiles, it's four pm."

"And there's six movies, with 13 hours and 14 minutes of watchtime because we are not going to watch The Clone Wars." He walked towards me and started dragging me off his bed.

"Only if we're going to watch Supernatural next time." I said, clinging onto the bed and not letting go before he agreed to my terms.

Truth be told, the movies were okay. They would've been great if Stiles hadn't shushed me every time I asked him something, claiming that "you'll find out" In the end, it was a pretty fun night.

~o~

24 days

"Just try to concentrate. Deep breaths." I said. I had little to no experience with Banshees, as they were pretty rare. I had even less experience with how to train one, and the bestiary wasn't helping either.

"I'm trying!" Lydia said, growing more and more frustrated.

"Just one word, that's all."

" _Stiles."_

I could hear Lydia's voice, but her lips weren't moving. Which meant that it was working. Which also meant another thing.

"Why the hell would you say Stiles?"

Lydia smirked at me. "Well I figured that if I tried to stick something in that head of yours, it might as well be something you're thinking about all the time anyway." She started laughing as I picked up one of the many pillows off her bed and started hitting her with it.

"I surrender!" she eventually yelled, and I stopped. Lydia's makeup was smudged, and her her was a tangled mess, but she didn't seem to care. "So are you two dating yet?"

"Shut up." I said, hitting her with the pillow one more time. "No, we're not. I guess." Lydia sat up, a smirk on her face.

"You guess?" she asked.

"Well, we hang out a lot. But it's hard to tell when it's just us two being friends and when… you know." Part of me wanted to go back to practicing. But the other part knew that Lydia had a lot more experience with relationships.

"Then make a move!" she exclaimed. "Ask the guy out! Most of them are too dumb to take the hints anyway." I let out a laugh at that.

"I know, and he's too awkward to ask but… part of me doesn't want to ask him out." I said, fiddling with my fingers. I didn't deserve him. He was sweet and funny and then there was me: a fucked up mess who first who is now more dependent on others than a disabled dog.

"You don't think you're worth him." Lydia said. She had her head tilted sideways and was squinting her eyes at me. My eyes widened and my mouth fell open.

"You were reading my thoughts!" I yelled.

"Honey, you were basically screaming them at me." she waved it off. "And it's not true, what you're thinking. You're still the kickass, sexy girl that I met all those years ago. Anyone who'd been through what you have been through would be a mess for at least some time." I was about to object, but outside a very familiar jeep honked.

"And that'd be Stiles." I said, pushing myself off the bed. "To pick me up. As I don't have a car."

"So you would want to go on a date?" Lydia asked. I froze. Would I? Yes. Yes I would. Very much so.

"I guess." I said. "If he even wants me."

Lydia let out a sigh. "Is this about what happened when you were… training? Because it doesn't matter to him."

"How can you know?" I asked, turning around. "How can you know that it doesn't matter that I killed people?" Lydia smiled softly at me and pushed herself off the bed.

"Because…" she said, walking over to face me. "If the same had happened to him, would it matter to you?" I clenched my jaw shut. Damn that girl. No. No it wouldn't.

~o~

20 days

I was downstairs on the couch, reading a book on Banshees (I was determined to do more research for Lydia) when Stiles ran down the stairs and barged into the room, a machete in his hand.

"What the hell is this?" he exclaimed. I looked up from my book and eyed him for a moment.

"A machete." I said. Stiles let out a scoff.

"Yeah, and why was it under our bed?"

"As far as I know, that's your bed, not mine." I pointed out. He blushed a bit, but unfortunately I didn't manage to distract him from the whole machete-thing.

"Lora, why would you even put this under the bed?"

"Because if I put it on top of it, people would see it." I said, turning a page of my book. "Besides, why were you even looking under your bed?"

"I'm getting a new one." he said, lowering the machete. He then realised he still hadn't got a real answer to his question. "Why do you even have a machete?"

"In case someone decides to show up in the middle of the night to kill one of us. Why are you getting a new bed?"

He rolled his eyes. "Well in case you haven't noticed, we're sleeping in a bed meant for one person. Doesn't leave much room, does it?"

I just shrugged. "We could always start spooning." Stiles' face grew a bright red and I laughed. "I'm joking! By the way, if you're getting rid of the bed, you might also want to remove the gun first." Stiles squinted his eyes at me, trying to figure out if it was a joke too or not. I shook my head, Stiles' face went pale, and he bolted upstairs.

"What the… Lora!" he yelled. I bit my lip and held back my laughter

~o~

17 days left

Lydia, Scott, Stiles and I were hanging out together at this weird 50's themed restaurant kind of thing. You know, us hanging out would've been impossible a couple of months ago but it felt almost natural now, as if we'd been hanging out for months. (No, not years. I said it felt _almost_ natural)

"You haven't texted Allison yet?" Lydia asked. Scott shook his head. Allison and her father had gone to France for the summer (and possibly longer than that), and Scott was killing himself by giving the girl space. Lydia nodded in approval. "Good. That's almost admirable."

"Almost?" I asked. Lydia turned to me, a slight smirk on her face.

"If he manages to hold off until the end of summer, then it's admirable." she said, and I nodded. Fair point. I still thought that Scott should never contact her ever again, but fair point.

"Alright, so, where are you taking us again?" Stiles asked, ending the Allison topic as he knew it annoyed the hell out of me. Also me gritting my teeth probably gave it away a bit.

Lydia smirked. "You'll see when we get there."

"Well, let's go then." I said, finishing my milkshake quickly before putting it down on the table. "Split the bill?"

"No, I've got it." both Scott and Stiles said. They looked at each other, as if silently discussing it. "We've got it." they eventually said, making both me and Lydia laugh.

"Our two telepathic gentlemen." Lydia commented as we walked away from our booth, leaving the two of them to handle it.

" _We're the ones to talk about telepathic."_ I said.

Lydia immediately slapped me on the shoulder for it.

"Can you not do that in public?" she hissed. "It freaks me out."

" _Sure."_

Slap.

~o~

After dinner we went to a movie. (wow that sounds like a cliche teen movie date, it wasn't a double date, we were just going out as friends) Anyway, Stiles and I were already at the Jeep when Lydia started poking around in my head.

" _Lora? Lora!"_ The volume of her voice made me wince, which alarmed Stiles.

"What's wrong?" he asked, putting a hand on my shoulder. I shook my head

" _Yeah?"_ I asked.

" _Tell Stiles to come back."_

"Lora?" Stiles shook me around a bit.

"Sorry, it was Lydia. She needs you to come back." Stiles hesitated. "It's okay, I'll wait here."

It only took a few minutes for Stiles to come back, and when he did he looked a bit shaken.

"You okay?" I yelled at him. He was at the other side of the carpark, but it was definitely him.

"Yeah!" he yelled back. He then started running until he reached the jeep. Even though it wasn't far, he was panting.

"You need to work on that." I said with a smirk on my face. "You ready to go?" I asked, walking around the jeep. When he didn't move, I stood on the tips of my toes to look over the car. He was looking down. "Stiles?" What the hell had Lydia said to him?

"Okay, ehm, so, do you… want to go on a date… with me?" He was still looking down, so he didn't see my expression fall or the blush on my cheeks. "It's okay if you don't want to, I ju- Lydia sai-"

"Yes." I quickly said. His head shot up.

"Really?"

"If you want to." I couldn't control the smile on my face. Stiles just nodded, with a happy though slightly dazed expression on his face. I let out a laugh, which made him smile. "Okay?" I asked, putting my hand on the door handle.

"Okay!" Stiles said, just a bit too loudly. "Okay." he repeated, softer now. I shook my head, a big grin on my face as I opened the car. He soon followed my example and then we were sitting in the car in silence.

"So… where are you taking me?" I asked.

"To be honest, really hadn't thought that far." I chuckled as the engine of the car revved. "Then let's just say that you'll surprise me."

~o~

14 days left

It was eight in the morning, and my phone was ringing. Eight in the fucking morning. On a sunday. In the summer. Fucking kidding me right now?

I slowly let myself roll off the bed so I wouldn't wake Stiles (though I doubted that was possible as he was still asleep even with my phone blaring) and walked to my phone.

"Hello?" I asked after I picked it up. My throat was dry and my voice raspy. Gross.

"Hello, is this Lorraine Hield?" a female voice asked. "I'm from Beacon Hills high school, the principal asked me to make this call for him."

"Yes, it's me." I said, rubbing my eyes one at a time with my free hand.

"Due to your absence last year and your low GPA, the school has decided that you'll be doing over your Sophomore year."

I let out a sigh. "Okay. Is that all?"

"Unless you have any questions…" the lady said, sounding somewhat confused.

"Nope, I know the drill. Thanks for the call." I said, hanging up. I put down my phone and turned back around to see if Stiles was awake. No, of course not. At least, I didn't think he was. He was lying face down into his pillow.

"Who was it?" Stiles asked, his voice muffled by his pillow. I chuckled a bit, maybe he was awake after all.

"The school. I have to do over Sophomore year." I said. He shot bolt upright and looked at me with a small frown on his face.

"Why?"

"Oh, maybe because my GPA might as well have a minus in front of it and I was only at school for like… one month last year." I said, walking over to and sitting down on the bed. I held my head in my hands. Just what I needed. An extra year of school with people I didn't know.

"Hey, you'll do fine." he said, moving to sit down next to me.

"I'm not sure…" I said. "I have quite a few gaps in my education, in case you haven't noticed."

Stiles put his hand over mine. "I'll help. I mean, now that the Argents are gone and you're helping Lydia, we won't have to worry about the supernatural anyway." I looked at him with a frown.

"Derek didn't tell you?"

"Tell what?"

"About the Alpha pack."

"A- what?" he spluttered. "An Alpha pack? As in an entire pack made of freaking alpha's?" he yelled.

"No Stiles, it's a pack of chihuahuas with the greek letter alpha shaved into their fur." I let out a sigh. "Yes, a pack of Alpha's. They're Derek's problem, not yours. So unless either the pack or Derek drags you into this, don't worry." But Stiles was worrying, a lot. I could tell, heck anyone could: he'd stood up and was now pacing back and forth.

"And what about you, then? Are you involved? And what about my dad? Don't tell me not to worry if you're not safe!" He'd stopped pacing, and was now looking at me.

"Derek said he's keeping me out of this, and I highly doubt that the pack wants anything from me." I said in attempt to calm him down. "And if you actually tell your dad about the whole supernatural thing, he won't get dragged into this either." It was an attempt to get him to tell his father, but he didn't look too eager.

"Nothing good comes from keeping secrets, Stiles."

"How am I even supposed to tell him?" he asked, throwing up his hands in the air. When I didn't say anything, he let out a sigh. "I'll help you with school, okay?" It was his (very bad) attempt to distract me from the topic, but it didn't work.

"I'll shift, he can't deny what's right in front of him."

Stiles shook his head. "No, no that's not explaining. That's convincing." His mind was racing, looking for possibilities. I smiled at how without knowing it, he'd already agreed to telling his father.

My eyes wandered about the room, as if trying to find something that would help explain it. They eventually stopped at the chess board on Stiles' nightstand. "Let's tell him everything. There's always two sides fighting against each other, everyone has a different role. Some people are powerful, they use others like pawns…" I took the board and walked over to his desk.

"What are you going to do?" Stiles asked. He was standing next to me now, eyeing the board.

"Don't know." I opened up the board, which functioned as a box for the pieces and set it up. "But you're the smart one, I'm sure you'll think of something." Just as I'd thought, after a few seconds Stiles started moving. He took a pen and post it blocks in two different colours. Soon he was writing down names and sticking them onto different pieces, instructing me where to put them.

After a few good minutes, we were all set. We'd set up the board for what happened since Scott got bit until I disappeared, and had a second setup ready for what happened with Jackson. Stiles was staring at it, his fingers drumming against his leg.

"It'll be alright. You're not doing this alone. It will be a lot to take in, but he can take it. He'll listen."

"Yeah, that's not what I'm afraid of." Stiles said. "He'll listen, but… I'm not sure if he'll believe." I let out a sigh and leaned my head against his shoulder.

"If Scott's mom can accept that her son turns into a fuzzy hairball of doom each month, then your father can accept the fact the the supernatural exists."

"Yeah… do you have something like a full moon for Ravens?"

"Once a year, on December 21st. It's the darkest day of the year, and it's believed that the veil between life and death is thinnest on that day."

"Is it?" he turned his head to look at me.

I shrugged. "All I know is that we get really powerful and really dangerous. Our human side gets the upper hand, emotions meddle with our judgement."

"So what happens?"

"Worst case, we kill anyone and anything that pisses us off." I paused. "You'll need to lock me up."

"I think I can handle it."

"I'm not like Scott. It'll be worse. Way worse. A shift room wouldn't be enough to keep me in."

"How about a birdcage?" he asked, a smirk on his face. I rolled my eyes and smacked him on the back of his head before walking away. "Where are you going?"

"To the toilet. Fortunately I do know how to do that." I stopped at the door and turned around. "Unless you'd like to help?" Stiles' face immediately grew red and he started stuttering out a response. "I'm joking, Stiles! Besides, I wait until at least a first date."

"Yes!" he blurted out. "Date…" I let out a laugh before leaving the room.

~o~

The sheriff had finally come home, and Stiles was now trying to tell him. He wasn't doing too well.

"Okay, so… you know all those cases that you couldn't solve?" Stiles said. He and his father were sitting opposite of each other, whilst I was sitting on the bed.

The sheriff didn't take that as a compliment. "Yeah, thanks. But if this is your idea of father-son time then I'll-" he'd started getting up, but I got to him before he could. With one hand on his shoulder, I pushed him back down.

"Let him talk." The sheriff sat back down and I nodded towards Stiles, who continued.

"So… What if you couldn't solve them because you couldn't see the whole board?" Stiles said, moving over to the desk where the board was set up.

"What's this?" the sheriff asked, frowning at the notes on the pieces. "Scott, Derek, Lora… What the hell?"

"Okay, you'll need some clarification for the next part." I said, pushing myself off the bed. I look at Stiles. "Should I just tell him?" Stiles nodded, I guess he didn't really know how to tell it either. So I just turned to the sheriff and said: "the supernatural is real."

"B- what?" the sheriff asked.

"Werewolves, Wendigos, Vampires… they're real." I summarised. The sheriff shook his head and stood up.

"No, dad…" Stiles said, stopping him. "Lora, could you…" I nodded and took off my jacket. I'd grown used to buying shirts and tanktops that had an opening at the shoulder blades, but I wasn't drilling a hole in my jackets just so my wings could fit through them.

"Okay, what's going on?" the sheriff asked. Stiles held him back and pointed at me.

"Just… look."

I slowly let out my wings, looking down at the floor as I did so. When I looked back up, the sheriff was staring at me with wide eyes.

"I know it's a lot to take in, but it'll get better once you do." I promised. "You ready for an explanation?" The sheriff nodded and slowly sat back down in his seat. Stiles let out a deep sigh and nodded.

"Alright, here we go."

~o~

"Well…" Stiles said. We were lying next to each other on his bed. "That could've gone worse."

"Could've gone a lot better too." I said. The sheriff acted like he was listening, and I'm sure that he wanted to understand and take it all in, but his mind seemed to have a kind of defense mechanism that rejected the idea of supernatural things being real. Most adults tended to have that.

"Yeah…"

"But at least he knows. If shit starts getting freaky with the Alpha pack, at least he'll know what's going on. Besides, it's always good to have someone on the inside when it comes to police and the sheriff's department."

"I just hope it doesn't put him in danger." I turned to lie on my side and prodded him in the shoulder until he did the same.

"He knows what he's getting into now. He can prepare. He's safer now than he's ever been."

"Except he doesn't know yet." That was true. The sheriff hadn't exactly made it easy for us to explain everything, and we'd only managed to cover everything until the Kanima. "What if something happens before we explain the rest?"

"It won't. We'll cover the Kanima tomorrow, and the Alpha pack shouldn't take too long either." Stiles still didn't look too sure. "Would you like me to have Jason come over for a while? He coul-"

"No, no Jason." Stiles said. "That guy gives me the creeps." I laughed at how uncomfortable he looked.

"No Jason?"

"No Jason."

 **A/N: I hope you enjoyed reading that chapter as much as I did writing it! I also hope that it's still a Saturday in whichever timezone you are, but in mine it is!**

 **Next chapter will be a bit shorter than usual, and I'm not saying it'll be about the date but... it'll be about the date. Plus a lil something else which will include a bit of foreshadowing. (Hint hint)**

 **As always, thank you so much for reading, and I'll see you at the end of the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	6. Chapter five

**Chapter five: The final countdown**

Two more days. Two more days until hell. And I was really fucking nervous. Oh, not because of school, oh no fuck that. No, today was the day of my and Stiles' first date. And I had no idea what to expect, he hadn't told me anything, and if it hadn't been for Lydia, I would've been a mess.

On a normal day I'm fairly easygoing with what I'm wearing, and I knew what I liked and what I could pull off. That day wasn't a normal day.

"What about this?" I asked, pulling outfit number four out of the closet.

"Lora, that's Stiles' flannel." Lydia said, taking it away from me and putting it back. "You should really get your own closet." I let out a scoff.

"In case you haven't noticed, I don't even have my own bed."

"Oh I bet you don't." I threw a sweater at her to wipe the smirk off her face.

We eventually settled for a black dress. Yes, that black dress. Lydia didn't mind lending it to me one last time (though I had a feeling she wouldn't come back to pick it up) She also lended me some silver jewellery and a kickass handbag, but for some reason only put on a bit of makeup. When I asked her why, she just shrugged and told me that she "didn't want to change my style too much." Which I appreciated, but still. Odd.

~o~

Alright Lora, date. Just a date. You've been on tons of dates before, you can do this. Just like all the other dates.

" _But all the other dates weren't with Stiles."_ A tiny voice in my mind said. I turned around to glare at Lydia.

"Get out of my head, Lyds." I said with a sigh. "He's late." I turned back around to the window. Outside there was complete darkness except for the little light the streetlights gave. No headlights. No Stiles.

"He's a boy!" Lydia exclaimed. "They're always late."

I frowned. "Aren't the girls supposed to be the ones who are always late?"

"Yeah…" Lydia said. "I just wanted to make you feel better." She was now standing next to me, looking outside. "You'll be fine." she patted me on the shoulder. "Why are you so nervous anyway? You're gonna kill it." she winced. "Sorry."

I shrugged. "It's fine. Just an expression." Suddenly, two headlights appeared into view, followed by Stiles' jeep. "And there he is."

Lydia patted me on the back, handed me my jacket and practically pushed my out of the door before Stiles could even ring the doorbell. The push had come so unexpectedly, Lydia had sent met stumbling over her driveway. Just when I thought I'd fall, Stiles caught me.

"You alright?" he asked, laughing nervously as he helped me get up.

Once I stood on my own two feet again, I nodded."Yeah, once I get over that cliche moment we just had, I'll be fine."

Stiles laughed, but anyone could've heard how nervous he was just by how forced it sounded. I smiled softly as I walked towards the jeep and sat down shotgun. I took a deep breath to calm myself down as Stiles sat down beside me, in the driver's seat.

"Alright, let's go." he said, starting up the car.

~o~

I had no clue where we were heading, nor what we were going to do. I'd already had dinner at Lydia's place, so it couldn't be that. Even though I had no idea what to expect, I certainly was taken by surprise when we parked next to a building that could only be a swimming pool. That was closed, mind you.

"Are you kidding me?" I said, laughing. "Are we going to do what I think we're going to do?"

Stiles rubbed the back of his neck. "You haven't looked inside your bag, have you?" Still laughing, I looked inside and saw a bikini. "So, what do you say?"

"The sheriff's son breaking the law for his first date with me…" I couldn't stop smiling. "I'm impressed."

Stiles clapped his hands together. "Great! Now we need to get in, and fast, because I'm not sure how long this thing works." he held up a small object. "The pool only has securities outside, so once we're in we should be fine."

The building was surrounded by fence, with one large metal gate. Stiles walked towards it and tried to open it, but no such luck.

"Okay, ehm…" he looked up the gate,but at the top were metal spikes. Should he even get up that high, his hands would get torn apart.

"Don't worry," I took off my jacket. "I've got this." I tossed him my bag and let my wings come out. "You don't have a fear of heights, do you?"

"Well, it's more of a general fear of everything, but…"

I rolled my eyes and walked towards him, wrapping my arms around his waist, positioning him so we were facing each other.I bit my lip as my stomach did a flip. "Arms around my neck."

A bit awkwardly, Stiles managed to get his arms positioned.

"Don't look down." I warned him.

"Wh- oh my God!"

I'd pushed us off the ground, into the air. Even though it wasn't long that we were in the air, Stiles was pretty shaken up once we got back down at the other side.

"Whoa, okay, that was…" he cleared his throat. "Let's go."

I smiled and took back my purse, which I held in my right hand. With my other hand, I reached for his. As soon as my fingers touched his, we laced them together without doing so much as thinking about it.

We went inside through the fire exit, which led us into the pool hall. The water glistened in the moonlight, which was the only source of light in the room. Next to the pool were rows of changing rooms.

I looked back at Stiles as I walked towards one. "No peeking, alright?" Stiles, of course, immediately started spluttering out a protest with no coherent words in it. I laughed as I closed the curtain of the small room. "Just teasing!"

I then changed into the bikini Lydia had packed for me. Just a plain black one, nothing special. Once I was done, I walked out of the room and saw Stiles waiting for me by the edge of the pool.

"Race you to the other side?" he asked.

I smirked at him. "It's fucking on."

~o~

The swimming was great, Stiles and I had loads of fun and we're both going to pretend that we didn't almost get caught by a cleaning lady and that we had to hide under water. Nope, nothing even like that ever happened.

Anyways, after a couple of hours we decided we'd had enough and would go home with the Jeep. Which (and don't ever let Stiles hear that I said this) is a total wreck of a car. Halfway through, something made the engine falter, and eventually the car broke down… it was raining.

"Okay… I can fix this." Stiles said as he stared at the engine. We were standing in front of the car, which had the hood up. Stiles reached for a roll of duct tape.

"Are you joking?" I asked, looking at it.

"I can't afford the repairs." he said, shaking his head a little before starting to work on the engine. With 'work on' I mean duct tape the broken parts together.

"You know what, as long as it's quick, I'm not complaining." I folded my arms over each other. "This rain is even colder than the water in the pool."

"Yeah sorry." Stiles said. "Not exactly the best first date."

I shrugged. "So far, I'd say it was my best."

He looked up at me, frowning. "Really?"

I let out a laugh. "Of course, you dumbass! Sneaking into a closed pool? That was amazing!" I beamed at him. "Also, it was with you. Of course it was the best." Stiles quickly went back to the engine after that, I guess it was in attempt to hide his blush. After fifteen minutes and a disturbing amount of duct tape, we were all good to go.

~o~

Last day before hell.

Oh I was pissed. Lydia had promised to give me a ride home from the place where my dad used to work (Stiles was going out with Scott), but she didn't mention the tiny fact that she'd also be driving Allison home. Let's just say that my reaction to seeing her wasn't pretty.

"What the fuck is she doing here?" I said, a bit louder than necessary. Lydia glared at me in warning.

"I'm bringing her home. If you don't like it, you can walk." Lydia hadn't expected for me to actually start walking. I'd just fly once she and Allison were gone, no problem. After only a few steps, Lydia called my name. "Wait." I turned around and saw her sticking her arm out of the window, headphones in her hands. "You can listen to music in the backseat if you want to."

I let out a huff, but took the headphones and got into the backseat. "Fine."

We stopped a few times, but all of them were because of a traffic light (yeah, I like to check those things. It's a thing you get used to after years of training) So when we'd just passed one and soon after stopped again, I was a bit confused. I looked up from my phone (I was texting Isaac for the fifth time that weekend, I couldn't find him anywhere), and saw that there wasn't a light, but both Lydia and Allison were looking out of the window in the back of the car. I turned around and even though it was dark, it was definitely Stiles' jeep that was standing still about ten to twenty feet behind us. I let out a sigh and turned back around.

"They stopped too…" Allison said. "Why would they stop?" Lydia shrugged.

"It's Stiles and Scott. Do you really want to apply logic to those two?" Between Allison and Lydia, I could see something big, an animal of some sorts, racing towards the car.

"Get out of th-" I was leaning forwards and pushing Lydia towards the door when the deer crashed through the window. There was a sharp pain in my arm as a piece of glass got stuck in my skin. Both Lydia and Allison were screaming for a good second or two before they got out of the car, and I followed them.

Both Scott and Stiles had run towards our car. Scott was standing in front of Allison. "Are you okay?" Allison nodded.

"Yeah, yeah."

"You're hurt." A voice said, followed by pain in my arm. I turned my head and saw that it was Stiles, but my vision wasn't focused. "Everything okay?" I nodded, trying to blink the blur away.

"Yeah, just a bit dizzy." I shook my head a bit and then it was gone. "Better now." I expected him to look relief, but he was more concerned than anything else. "What?"

"Your arm…"

"Oh my God!" Lydia exclaimed. I quickly took a look at my arm, which had several tiny pieces of glass embedded in it, along with a few larger shards. Blood was trickling down my arm. "You need to get her to the hospital." Stiles immediately headed towards the jeep, pulling me along by my good arm.

"Wait, how will you get home?" I yelled over my shoulder.

"We'll call a taxi, it's fine, just go!" Lydia yelled back.

Soon after we got into the car, I started to feel the pain in my arm. Stiles occasionally glanced at my arm, worried.

"Okay, okay, can't you heal?" He was panicking. Great.

I shook my head. "Not with the glass still stuck in it. I've had worse Stiles, just focus on the road."

Ten minutes and a couple of near run-ins with a pedestrian or two, we'd reached the hospital.

Lucky for us, Scott's mom was at the information desk. I'd draped Stiles' jacket over my shoulders so people wouldn't stare.

"What are you two doing here?" Melissa asked.

"There was an accident with a deer, and…" Stiles turned his head towards me. A bit reluctantly, I pulled off the jacket. Melissa's eyes widened a bit, and then she nodded.

"Okay, that's going to have to be removed. I… can make sure it gets done now if I put it under emergency."

"Do that." I raised an eyebrow at Stiles when he answered for me. He rolled his eyes. "There is glass literally sticking out of your arm right now!" He gestured at my arm, which indeed didn't look pretty. I didn't have supernatural healing when I wasn't shifted, but pain always was a bit… dulled. Number, if you will.

"I'll do it." Melissa pushed walked through the door behind the desk, and soon walked back followed by another woman who took over Melissa's job for her. "Come with me." We followed Melissa down the hallway, into a room. She didn't waste any time, but immediately gathered supplies and sat me down on the bed.

"You need an anesthetic?" She held up a syringe. I shook my head, but Stiles insisted. I turned my head to glare at him, about to say that it wasn't necessary, when I felt something on the top of my injured arm. Melissa had already put the needle in.

"You might want to close your eyes," she said to Stiles, who shook his head.

"Nah, I can handle it."

He couldn't. Fainted after Melissa pushed in the anaesthetic.

I shook my head as I saw him lying on the floor. "Idiot."

 **A/N: Oh God, that was so bad. I'm so sorry. It was short, and shit, and just bad in general. If you managed to read through that one, I applaud you. And thank you for putting up with my bad writing.**

 **Anyways, next chapter should be better. I hope. Oh God I hope I'll never write a chapter as shitty as this one ever again.**

 **As always, thanks for reading (now more than ever) and I'll see you in the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	7. Chapter six

Chapter six: Dealing with the Devil

Ah, school. Hundreds of sweaty, hormonal teenagers who do their bests to not fall asleep during hours of lectures and learning. The first day was usually not that stressful, and quite easy going for most people. I wasn't most people. Whilst everyone was at their lockers, I was in the guidance counsellor's office with miss Morell.

"You know that I need to be in the same class in order to protect them." I pointed out.

"True, but your academic performances are… well there aren't any."

"Touche." I nodded. "But there's the Alpha pack and I need to make sure they're safe. Just give me one term to prove that I can keep up, that's all I need."

Morell tilted her head at me. "Okay. Two conditions: I still want you here every week and if you fail, you'll go back to Sophomore."

"Deal." I said, standing up and walking to the door. "Thank you, by the way."

"If you ever need help with your French, just let me know." I almost let out a scoff. French? Oh I had no problem with French. Know thy enemy. And their language. Not that the Argents were our enemies per say, but dad had insisted on me learning French so they couldn't talk behind my back. "Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger eux-mêmes, madame Morell."

Morell smirked at me. "I must say that I prefer the original version. What was it again?" I knew that she hadn't forgotten, but the code gave me a sense of comfort, a sense of home. So I didn't mind saying it.

"We werian ðæge pro ðe canne nænig pro beorgan sîn âgnian"

We protect those who can not protect themselves.

I left Morell's office and went to my first class, but not after picking up my new books. I was lucky that Stiles had mentioned where he had to be, if not for that I would've been later and that was not a good first impression.

"Hey." I said as I passed Stiles and sat down at the table behind him.

"He- wh- Lora?" he turned around. "What the hell are you-"

"Had a little chat with Morell. Everything's fine." I said with a wink. He was caught off guard at first, but soon frowned at me.

"You look a bit pale, are you alright?" I shrugged and told him I felt fine. He opened his mouth to respond but his phone interrupted him. Along with all the other phones in class. Except mine. I watched as everyone looked at their screens in confusion. Then, without anyone noticing, a teacher walked into the room. She was pretty young, pretty good looking and… the one who'd sent all the texts, wasn't she?

"The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway, leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky, seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness." The whole class was looking at her now. "This is the last line of the first book we're going to read. It is also the last text that you'll receive in this class." she smiled. "Phones off, everyone."

Class was about halfway over when the principal walked in and whispered something to miss Blake, the teacher, who then called Scott over. They left the room and only the teacher came back. Weird…

"Hey, Lydia." Stiles whispered. Well, I say whispered, but he wasn't a very good whisperer.

"What?" Lydia hissed back.

"Is that from the accident?" Stiles pointed at a bandaid around Lydia's ankle. Lydia shook her head.

"No… Prada bit me."

"You dog?" Stiles frowned at her.

"No, my designer handbag." I quickly stifled a laugh. "Yes, my dog."

Stiles leaned forward. "Has it ever bitten you before?" Lydia just shook her head. "Okay, what if it's like the same thing as the deer? You know, how animals start acting weird before an earthquake or something?"

Lydia turned towards him, sceptical. "So? There's going to be an earthquake?"

"Or something!" I had no idea how Stiles managed to sound loud and hushed at the same time. "I don't- maybe it just means that something's coming. Something bad."

"It was a deer and a dog." Lydia said with a shrug. But she hadn't discarded Stiles' theory just yet. "What's that thing you say about three's? Once, twice…" As if on cue, a crow flew against the window, covering it with blood and falling down dead.

I let out a sigh. Good thing I stayed in this class. "Once is a chance, twice is a coincidence, and third time…" I watched as a flock of birds got closer to the school. "We've got a pattern."

Miss Blake had walked to the window, which she was staring out of with a worried expression on her face. An expression that multiple students matched as they too looked out of the window. Miss Blake turned around for a second, and just then another bird hit the glass behind her, this time putting a crack in it. A second afterwards, another bird hit the window.

"Everybody get down!" I yelled as the first window cracked and several birds flew into the room. Soon the students who hadn't immediately got down were being terrorised by birds flying into their hair and sometimes pecking at them. Mostly, the birds seemed to fly against the walls or ceiling. It was like they wanted to die. I suddenly got pulled down to the floor by Stiles, who then tried to protect me by leaning over me. My mind was still racing. If it didn't work, it wouldn't matter…

"árfæstnes " I whispered. Immediately the room fell still. And with the room I mean the birds. They'd all fallen down, dropped dead. Slowly everyone stood up, no one able to find words to speak. Not even me. (Shocker, right?) Stiles slowly got off me and pulled me up, steadying me when I swayed from left to right. There it was again. That nausea.

"You okay?" he asked. I blinked heavily until my vision turned clear again, and that's when I saw that there was a bit of blood trickling down the side of his head.

"Let me see that." I turned his head and stood on my toes to get a better look at it. Just a small wound. It wouldn't even scar. I took a tissue out of my bag and used it to wipe away the blood, ignoring both Stiles' attempts to talk to me and to make sure I didn't fall. (which, in hindsight, was a good thing he did because I would've fallen)

It didn't take long for the sheriff's department (including the sheriff himself) and the medics to get to the school, and soon the students with the worst injuries were being treated and one or two taken to the hospital.

"You two got an idea how those birds suddenly… y'know?" the sheriff asked me and Stiles.

"Can we do this later? I'm not feeling very good." I made sure to send a meaningful look to the sheriff. Yes, I could explain, but not here.

The sheriff nodded. "Alright." He then walked away to talk to miss Blake. Stiles and I were sitting on tables, opposite of each other. He pushed his foot against mine.

"Hey." he said. I looked up and his eyes met mine. He was worried. "Feeling better yet?" I shrugged.

"It's fading. But I don't understand. This is just… wrong." There's that word again. Wrong. Everything about this felt wrong. But there must be a reason why. Without knowing it, I'd started biting on my nails. I figured out when Stiles pulled away my hand from my mouth.

"We'll figure it out." he said. I don't know if he noticed, but he hadn't let go of my hand, which was calming, in a way. I slowly got off my table and moved to sit next to him. Closing my eyes, I rested my head on his shoulder.

~o~

After some more investigation from the sheriff's department, we were free to go. Because first period hadn't exactly gone as planned and some people were "upset", we were allowed to go home. And I thought we were going to, but then Stiles called Scott and he told him to get to the Hale house and then…

"Why didn't you tell me?" I glared at Derek, who sighed.

"It's my problem, not yours. I didn'-"

"My friend," I said, pointing at an unconscious Isaac who was laying on the table, "my problem." I lowered my arm. "What happened?"

Derek's betas, Isaac, Boyd and Erica, had been kidnapped by the Alpha pack. Only Derek had used the word "rival pack" which I didn't point out for Scott's sake. He'd done so well over the summer, he deserved some more peace. Anyway, somehow Isaac had escaped and ended up in the hospital. An Alpha had clawed him in the stomach, and the wound was only healed on the outside.

"Why call Scott, not me?" I asked.

"Isaac asked my mom to call me. He didn't want to bother you." I shook my head at Scott's answer. I knew Isaac meant well, but I was trained for this. Scott wasn't.

"Isaac will be fine." Derek assured me, a small smile on his face. "But Scott, what was that favour you needed?"

Scott sighed and looked at the ground. "Can you get me a tattoo?"

I snorted. "You tried to get a tattoo?" Stupid idea, it'd heal within minutes. Stiles nudged me in the side and I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, he can get you the tattoo."

~o~

So, with a little help from me and Stiles, Derek managed to get Scott's tattoo on. With a blowtorch. It wasn't a pretty scene, and I won't bother to describe it to you.

Anyway, what else could be added to a day of school? Something else that I… didn't really like. A party. A motherfucking party are you joking? And Stiles was not only dragging me there, but also Scott, who was obviously not in the mood either. Stiles was rambling about it as we walked down the street towards the house.

"Just one drink, alright?" he was gesturing wildly with his arms. "I know this girl, I went to nursery school with her, she promised me to introduce us to all of her friends."

"Then why exactly do I have to come?" I asked, looking at the hordes of teenagers who were walking towards the party.

"Come on, Lora, work with me here!" Stiles sighed. "You're his wingman. Woman. Anyway, just speak highly of him to some other girls, okay? They'll trust you! No Allison tonight." At least that was something I could get behind. Scott looked down at his phone, which he then stuffed into his pocket.

"Yeah, you're right." He and Stiles did some weird high five thing before they walked towards the front door, me following them. As soon as they stepped through the door, a girl called Stiles' name. When I walked inside I saw it was a blonde girl from around our age.

"Hi!" Stiles smiled. "There's the birthday gi-" My eyes widened as the girl kissed him on the mouth. Stiles frowned for half a second before pulling back. "Oh God, that's… really awkward, I…" I pushed myself past Scott and held out a hand towards the girl.

"Hi, I'm Lorraine. Stiles' girlfriend." The girl's eyes widened and she quickly stepped back.

"Oh God, I'm so sorry!" Her cheeks grew red. "I thought…" She took my hand and shook it. "I'm Heather, and also really, very sorry." I smiled at her and shrugged. She couldn't have known, really.

"That's fine. By the way, Scott has an excellent wine taste, perhaps he could help you pick a bottle?." I winked at her. She titled her head and eyed Scott from head to toe.

"Do you want to?" Scott nodded, eyes a bit wide. Heather took his hand and led him away. Scott turned his head and mouthed "thank you" before walking with her. I let out a laugh as I watched them walk off.

"Birthday girl?" I asked what I presumed was Heather's friend, who was standing next to her.

"You betcha." she said before walking away, which left just me and Stiles, who was smirking at me.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "What is it?" He shrugged, but was still smirking.

"Nothing, it's just that I never knew you thought of yourself as my girlfriend."

"Well if you don't want me," I looked aroun the room. "there's a ton of hot drunk guys in here and I…"

"No, no. That won't be necessary. I just- do you want to be my girlfriend?" I beamed at him and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. "W- okay."

"That's a yes, by the way."

The party turned out to be not horrible. The people were nice, and the beer was really very good. I was having a good time. I think. To be quite honest with you, it's a little bit fuzzy. Anyway: good times. Until…

"Heather's gone." Scott had showed up next to us out of nowhere.

"What do you mean gone?" Stiles hissed.

"I went upstairs for a bit and when I came back she was gone!"

"Okay, why were you going upstairs?" Stiles asked.

"Bet you ten bucks it was to get a condom." I clapped in delight as Scott's face gave away the answer. "Called it! You owe me ten bucks." Stiles shook his head at me.

"I didn't agree to the bet, Lora."

I rolled my eyes. "Rude."

Scott frowned at me for a second and then looked at Stiles, pointing at me. "Is she…"

"Drunk? Yep." Stiles nodded. "She had like five beers, I checked."

I tapped him on the shoulder. "I might've taken two shots when you went to pee." Stiles stared at me with wide eyes and an overall 'What-the-fuck-Lora-I-told-you-not-to-do-that' expression until Scott slapped his shoulder.

"Dude! Heather?"

Stiles nodded. "Right. She has to be somewhere." He looked down at his feet for a second, thinking. "Okay, we split. Scott, you check the yard, I'll go to the basement and top floor, Lora, you-" he froze. "How about you just wait here…" he looked around for a bit, walked a few steps and came back with a water bottle which he shoved into my hands. "Here, drink the whole thing, okay?" I nodded, let myself fall onto a couch and started drinking.

~o~

By the time they came back, I was only slightly tipsy… they took a long time to come back, alright? Anyway, they hadn't found Heather and both of them were freaking out.

"Should we call your dad?" Scott asked. We were sitting on the couch in the corner of the room.

Stiles scoffed. "Yeah, and how about we tell him that Lora and about half of the people here are drunk? You know, all these people who aren't eighteen!"

Scott nodded. "Fair point. So what do we do?"

"She might've hooked up with another guy, y'know. Maybe she and some friends went to steal a traffic sign. Maybe she's on the roof. People do weird things when they're drunk and horny." I winked at Stiles, who promptly shoved another water bottle into my hands and ordered me to drink the whole thing. I rolled my eyes once more and started drinking again.

"We might as well go home." Scott stood up from the couch. Stiles nodded and stood up too, after which he pulled me off the couch.

"Yeah, I want to get her to bed until she's sober enough to protest." I let out a laugh, which confused Stiles for a second until he turned a bright red. "Oh God, no, I didn't-" I laughed again, this time Scott joined me. Stiles closed his jaw and pulled me after him towards the front door.

~o~

Fucking headaches. Hated them. Lucky for me, a minute or two shifted was enough to filter out the alcohol and heal my liver. Now I didn't have an headache anymore because of the party, but I felt like Stiles was giving me a new one.

"I just think we have to do something, alright? What if we…" he kept on rambling as he paced back and forth through the room.

"Stiles." I interrupted him. "Remember this thing, it's called school? Yeah, we need to go there. If I fail just one of my classes, I get held back."

He stopped pacing, nodded, and grabbed his backpack. You'd think that'd be quite an achievement, getting Stiles to stop thinking about something, but his face was still folded into a frown. He was still thinking. As we walked down the stairs, he started rambling again. Since we were still walking, I chose to ignore it. But by the time we reached the car, he stopped and turned around.

"Okay, so I've got a pl-" I silenced him with a kiss on the lips, quickly pulling away before he could deepen it.

I grinned at how dazed he looked. "First school, then we can talk plans." I walked around the car, and when I got in Stiles was already sitting behind the wheel. I saw that he was thinking again and wanted to fucking scream.

Then, he turned to me. "You think you could… like, train me? Defence and stuff." I frowned a bit and then nodded.

"Yeah, I suppose I could… but I'm not giving you a gun."

He threw his hands in the air. "Oh come on! How am I supposed to fight supernatural creatures with supernatural claws with a baseball bat?"

"Simple," I smirked. "Get an aluminium one. Much better than wood."

Stiles rolled his eyes. "You sound like my dad."

"Just drive, Stillinski!" I said, laughing.

~o~

Oh come on, do I really need to tell you about school? Don't we all have (had) enough of that in our lives? It was the usual boring crap. Well… apart from two things. The first one being when Lydia and Allison had called for a group meetup, claiming they had something to find Boyd and Erica, Derek's other beta's.

Said 'something' was apparently a bruise they'd gotten from the girl who saved Isaac. Derek and I stared down at the girl's arms in disbelief. Seriously? A bruise?

"And how does this help me find Boyd and Erica?" Derek asked. He wasn't amused.

"It's the same on both sides, exactly the same." Scott said in attempt to get through to us. Inspecting them further, I did notice that they were the same.

"It's nothing." Derek looked Allison dead in the eye.

Lydia raised her eyebrows at Allison. "Pareidolia. Seeing patterns that aren't there." We stared at her in confusion. "It's a subset of Apophenia!"

I shook my head. "Yeah, don't know what that is either. But that…" I pointed at their bruises. "Is useless as it is now. It might be a symbol, but none that I know of. I suggest you either find out or come with something that's actually helpful." I glared at Allison.

"They are." Scott said. "Trying to help."

Derek raised his eyebrows at him. "These two?" he turned to Lydia. "This one, who used me to resurrect my psychotic uncle. Tha-"

"Which she had no control over." I objected.

Derek turned to Allison. "And this one, who shot over thirty arrows into me and my pack."

"All right, okay, now come on." Stiles objected. "No one died, alright? There may have been a little maiming, but no one died."

"Actu-" Allison started.

"Actually, Boyd would've died hadn't it been for me or Allison's father, so that's not a valid point." I ignored Stiles 'come on!' gestures and turned to Allison. "And if you were going to say anything about your mother dying, I suggest you choose your next few words very carefully because I swear to God, I will ri-"

"-That's enough!" Scott said. "They just want to help." Derek shook his head.

"If they want to help, find something real." And with that, he left the room. An awkward silence fell.

"Well… that could've gone worse." Stiles commented.

Second thing that made that day somewhat interesting was what happened during Economics, when the sheriff showed up and asked me, Scott, and Stiles to get out off class for a while so he could ask us a few questions.

Turns out, no one had seen Heather since the party.

"We figured she hooked up with her friends." Stiles said.

The sheriff shook his head. "Well her friends say you three were the last ones who saw her. We're hoping that it's just a couple of bad decisions based on too much drinking, but if any of you remember anything else, call me, alright?" We nodded and were just about to walk back to class, when I suddenly felt dizzy again.

"Stiles…" I asked, supporting myself by leaning against the wall. "Last night, I didn't mention anything about my ears hurting or ringing, did I?

Stiles frowned. "No, no I don't think so… You okay?

I nodded. "Yeah, fine."

I lied. I wasn't fine. And something told me that Heather wasn't fine either.

 **A/N: Finally, a chapter that I didn't find to be a failure! Just kidding.**

 **I don't know how many chapters this story will have, what I do know is that the next one will begin at the same point season 3B did.**

 **As always, thank you all so much for reading, and I'll see you in the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	8. Chapter seven

Chapter seven: Breaking into a bank

Question: What's the best way to retrieve someone's memory without putting them in harm's way?

Answer: Freezing them to near-death in an ice bath. At least according to Deaton it is.

I stood next to Isaac, looking at the ice-filled bathtub. "You don't have to do it, you know." Isaac nodded at that, mumbling something. "I'm just saying, you might die." He looked at me with wide eyes and I forced myself to smile. "Not that I'd ever let you." Though as soon as Isaac looked away, that smile fell.

"You ready?" Scott asked. He and Derek were standing at the head of the tub, ready to push him under. Isaac nodded, took off his shirt and went in, breathing sharply.

"See you soon." I nodded at him, and he nodded back just before he went under. "Hold him down." Derek and Scott placed their arms on one shoulder each, pushing him down. But instinct is strong, and Isaac managed to push himself out of the water. He'd shifted and let out a deafening roar.

"Hold him!" Deaton ordered. Stiles jumped in to push Isaac's feet down, and the three of them managed to keep him under water until Isaac stopped struggling. Soon Isaac's face stuck out above the water, breathing slowly.

Deaton held up a finger. "Remember, only I do the talking. Too many voices will confuse him and bring him out of the trance." I gave him a look and then he pointed at Scott. "Keep track of his heartbeat." He then leaned towards the tub, softly speaking to Isaac. "Isaac? Can you hear me?"

Isaac shifted a bit before answering. "Yes. I can hear you."

"This is doctor Deaton. I'd like to ask you a few questions, is that alright?"

"Yes."

"I'd like to ask you about the night you found Erica and Boyd. I want you to remember it for me in as vivid detail as possible. Like you're actually there again."

Isaac started shaking his head. 'I, I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that." Outside, thunder was rumbling. After one especially loud bang the lights started flickering. Isaac was making sluggish attempts to get out of the bath, but was held back by Scott and Derek. "I don't wanna do that."

"Isaac, just relax." Deaton looked up at the flickering lights. "They're just memories…"

But Isaac was still stirring. "I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that." I let out a sigh and started biting on the nail of my thumb. Isaac's skin was as white as a sheet and his lips were almost blue. Stiles, who was standing next to me, took notice of my worries and put his hand on my shoulder. I smiled, but it must've come over as tense, as he let go of my shoulder and grabbed my hand instead, squeezing it. Meanwhile, Isaac had calmed down.

"Can you tell me what the building looks like?" Deaton asked. "Is it a house?"

Isaac shook his head lightly. "No, no, not a house… it's stone. Marble, I think."

"Any other descriptors?"

"It's empty… dusty."

"Like an abandoned building?" Isaac didn't answer. Thunder rumbled outside and the there was only one light still flickering. "Isaac?"

"Someone's here…" Isaac said, stirring around. "Someone's coming." he grabbed Scott's arm. "No no no no no, they see me! They see me!" Derek had to push harder to keep him down.

"Just memories. Can't be hurt by memories." Deaton reminded him. "Relax. Relax." Slowly but surely, Isaac relaxed. "Now tell us everything."

"I… walked in. Boyd was there. I could hear him talking. About the full moon, about losing control."

Deaton frowned. "Was he talking to Erica?"

"I think so, I… I can't see her. I can't see either of them."

"Can you hear anything else?" Deaton spoke loudly now, making sure Isaac could hear him over the thunder.

"They're worried. They're worried about the full moon. They're worried that… that they're gonna hurt each other."

"Isaac. We need to find them right now. Can you see them?"

"No."

"Can you see what room it is?"

"No."

"Any kind of marker? A sign on the door? A number?"

Suddenly, Isaac shot up. "They're here. They're here. They're here." He looked around frantically. "They see me, they've found me, they're here!"

"This isn't working." Derek turned to Isaac. "Isaac, where are you?"

"You're going to confuse him!" Deaton objected.

Derek didn't listen. "Isaac?"

"I see… I see…" Isaac started mumbling the words over and over again. "I see…"

"Where are you?" Derek shouted.

Isaac shook his head wildly. "It's a vault! It's a vault… I see… I see…" again those two words, over and over again. "I see a body. It's Erica's." We looked at each other in shock. Erica was dead. Then who was the one Boyd had been talking to? Out of nowhere, Isaac shot up, completely out of trance. "I saw it!" he yelled. "I saw the name…" He pushed himself up, and with some help from Scott and Deaton, got out of the bath. I quickly ran over with a large towel and draped it over him. "It's ehh, Beacon Hills First National Bank. It's an abandoned bank, and they, they're keeping them locked inside the vault.

The rest of us exchanged glances. He couldn't remember, could he? Isaac noticed our worry. "What?"

Stiles took a deep breath. "You don't remember what you said, right before you came out of it, do you?" Isaac shook his head.

I looked at my feet. "You said that you saw a body. Erica's."

I went away to get Isaac a sweater I'd been keeping warm in the dryer. When I got back, they were arguing what to do.

"You need to be careful about this, Derek. You can't just go storming in." Deaton said.

Derek wasn't really up for discussion. "Look, if Isaac got in, then so can we."

"Yeah but Isaac didn't get into the vault, now did he?" I said, throwing the guy in question the sweater. "Let me guess, Stiles is on the internet figuring out if someone ever broke into the bank?" I turned around and there he was, on his phone, doing exactly what I thought he'd do.

"Yup. And here we go…" he showed me the screen.

"Beacon Hills' first national closes three months after robbery." I smirked. "How long until you figure out how they did it?"

He scoffed. "Minutes."

~o~

First, it was minutes. Then, it was 'an hour or two'. Next thing I know, Scott is coming over to help and all of a sudden it's the next morning and the three of us are woken up by the sheriff whilst being surrounded by articles about the robbery.

"You three. Get to school." he said, about to leave when Stiles called after him.

"Dad! Heather?"

The sheriff shook his head. "Nothing." He then left the room.

Stiles let out a sigh as he stood up, throwing away a paper that had been hanging on his arm. "Ten hours and nothing!"

"We'll find something." Scott said, nodding.

"Well finding something doesn't make Erica any less dead. Or Boyd any less about-to-be-dead." Stiles said as he gathered the papers from the floor.

"We still have time." Scott said.

I let out a groan. "Scott, it's way too early for me to be putting up with your 'always remain optimistic even when everything is shit' thing to make you a better whatsit." I rolled off the bed and fell hard with my back on the floor. Odd, usually I'd be up and about in no time. Letting out another groan, I took an article that had stuck to my face off it. I frowned as I looked at the picture. "Sheriff!" I yelled, jumping up and running out of the room, pushing the article into Stiles' hands. Underneath the headline was a picture of Stiles' father pushing someone into a police car.

~o~

It was five thirty. We were supposed to meet at Derek's loft at five. I would've been on time hadn't it been for Harris, who was convinced that he needed to personally supervise me catching up on chemistry. Fun.

I stood at the bottom of the building and looked up. Those damn stairs. Derek lived in an industrial part of town, no one came there. Looking around one last time, I let out my wings and flew up to the loft. Through the window I saw Derek, Stiles, and Scott standing at at table, looking over some papers. I knocked on the window, scaring the living shit out of them.

"Could you let me in?" I yelled. Derek rolled his eyes, walked towards the window and opened it.

"Thanks." I said, smiling as I flew in.

"You could've just taken the stairs, you know." Derek went back to the table.I just shrugged and walked over to the table. On it was the layout of the bank, with notes from Stiles written on it.

"And what's the dead guy doing here?" I asked, pointing behind me. On the stairs in the corner sat Peter, who rolled his eyes.

"Trying to keep you from acting out this plan, which is, if I may say, horrible." he was glaring at Derek, trying to get the message through to him. It wouldn't work. Derek was way too loyal, he wouldn't abandon his Beta's. Even if the plan was idiotic… the least I could do was the thing I've always tried to do. Protect the others.

I let out a sigh. "What's the plan?"

~o~

The plan was the same plan the thieves had used. There was some free space between the wall of the vault and the outside wall. Scott and I would lower Derek into it, he'd smash through the wall, and we'd get them out through the same hole. Sounded easy. Almost too easy. And just when we were about to climb up the roof, Scott had the same thought, and he hesitated. Derek noticed.

"What is it?" he asked, but Scott shook his head. "No, what is it? The full moon's almost up."

"Risk and reward." Scott said. "I think we're not measuring the risk with enough information. We don't know enough"

I sighed. "He has a point…"

But Derek wouldn't hear any of it. "I know that time's running out. We don't have time to figure out every little detail."

"But what if this detail is the most important one?" Scott frowned in thought. "They put the Triskele on your door months ago. Why wait until now?"

"They probably know that we're coming." I was starting to really believe Peter on how dangerous this plan was.

Derek had enough of it. "Then we do nothing, alright? I know what I'm risking. My life for Erica's and Boyd's. And if you're not coming, I won't judge you." With that, he jumped up towards a ladder that led up to the roof.

"Well that's a little convenient." I mumbled as I watched him climb up. I then looked at Scott. "If he's going, I'm going. I could always drag his ass back out here." Scott nodded, hesitating for a moment before he followed Derek up the roof. I spread my wings and flew up, landing at the same time as Scott finished climbing. Derek had already gone down the space between the walls.

"You go first." I said, nodding at the hole in the roof. Scott nodded and went down. I watched him go down, my heartbeat rising. Judging by the amount of room between the walls, I couldn't fly back up. It was much smaller than I'd hoped. Derek would have to punch through the outer wall to get us out. For a second, I hesitated whether or not I should go in.

Then, my phone started vibrating. I took it out of my pocket and looked who it was before picking up.

"Stiles? Everything alright?" I asked.

"Lora? Lora! Listen to me, you gotta get out of there, alright?" Stiles was yelling, and he was yelling fast. "Look, the walls of the vault are made with a mineral called Hecatolite, alright? It scatters the moonlight."

I frowned. "So the moonlight doesn't get in or what?" There came roars from inside the vault. Oh fuck.

"Yes! They haven't felt the full moon in months!" Stiles exclaimed.

"Think of it as the gladiators in the Roman Colosseum." Peter said. "They used to starve the animals-"

"For days so they got more vicious, yeah I know." I interrupted before freezing. How did I know that? Stiles must be rubbing off on me. Down in the vault was another roar. "It's too late. I can hear them roaring."

Stiles was back on the phone. "Wh- hear them? So you're not in yet?"

I shook my head. "No, not yet. But if I don't go now, they'll get ripped to shreds."

"And if you do go in now, you'll also get ripped to shreds!" Peter yelled.

"They need to know." I said, peering into the hole.

"Lora, don't go in. There has to be a better way." Stiles pleaded. I bit my inner lip. How else could I get in? A way that no one would expect… I let out a sigh. I was really going to do this, wasn't I?

"I'm going through the front door. They probable have mountain ash around the edges of the vault or something, but there must be a way I can break the line, let them out whilst keeping the other two in."

"Through the fr- how is that a better way?" Stiles yelled. "Lora, you can't! Don-" I hung up.

~o~

Funny enough, no one ran into me. No, really, I just walked in and there was no one there. That was, until I almost got to the vault. There, I ran into Allison.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I hissed.

She rolled her eyes. "Finding something real." We were running towards the vault. Well, I was flying since that was a lot quicker and made less noise, she was running and following me.

"We need to get Scott and Derek out whilst keeping the other two in." I just hoped Allison wouldn't mess it up. We got to the vault, which was already open. The only thing that kept me from going inside and the others from coming out was a thin line of mountain ash.

Inside, there was a fight going on. Derek and a girl I didn't know where fighting, and Boyd had Scott pinned against the wall with his claws in Scott's stomach. Whilst I was still thinking of what to do, Allison seemed to have a different plan. Before I could do something about it, she crouched down and broke the line of ash.

"Boyd!" she yelled. Boyd's head snapped towards us and he raced for the exit. I quickly jumped up so he wouldn't get to me, and Allison hid behind the vault door. Boyd was soon followed by the girl, and they were gone by the time I landed on my feet.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Derek yelled as he ran out of the vault.

"That I had to do something!" Allison said.

I scoffed. "Oh you did something alright. Now there's two maniac werewolves running around!" Allison glared at me and I glared right back.

"She saved our lives!" Scott, who'd just come out of the vault, protested. There was blood dripping down his chin and his gut was slashed open.

"Yeah, and what do you think they're gonna do out there?" Derek yelled, turning to Allison. "Do you have any idea what you just set free?"

Allison clenched her jaw. "You wanna blame me? Well I'm not the one turning teenagers into killers." She shook her head and turned around, walking away.

"No, that's just the rest of your family." Derek said.

Allison turned around. "I've made mistakes. Gerard is not my fault."

Derek tilted his head. "And what about your mother?"

Allison frowned. "What do you mean?"

Derek turned his head towards Scott, who looked down at his feet. "Tell her, Scott." Scott sighed, but didn't say anything.

I balled my fists. "Look, we don't have time for this."

Allison didn't listen. "What does he mean Scott?" Scott didn't answer. "Scott?" Her eyes were wide and her mouth was hanging open ever so slightly. She was scared. Terrified, actually.

Speaking of terrified, a loud scream seemed to echo through the empty bank. My head shot up as I recognised whose it was. Lydia. She was at home, so she wasn't in danger, but… for her to scream, something must be wrong. Someone must be close to death.

"Guys, we need to go now." I spread my wings. "Lydia just screamed."

Derek shook his head. "No, I need to find Erica." I let out a sigh but nodded. It was fair enough, he had a right to do that.

"She's in the janitor's closet on the first floor." Allison said, looking down at her feet. "I was hiding in there when I saw her." Derek stared at her with wide eyes before running off. I bit my inner lip as I watched him go. He had pushed away the thought of her being dead, but even he couldn't deny it when he saw her body…

"Scott, what did Derek mean?" Allison asked.

Scott looked down and sighed. "She tried to kill me."

Allison took a shaky breath, sticking her chin up in the air. She was trying to pull herself together. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Scott shook his head. "Look, I'll tell you anything, alright? A-anything you wanna know but now-"

"Just tell me why." Allison shook her head.

"I couldn't. I couldn't let that be the last memory that you had of her."

Next to me I heard footsteps. Derek had come back, carrying Erica's body in his arms. My heart dropped down to my stomach as he looked down at her, biting his lip to hold back his tears.

~o~

I was flying just under the treetops, which meant I had to dodge a ton of branches, but also that I could scan the area fairly quickly. Scott and Derek were each covering their own area. I slowed down when I saw something moving. It was too small to be Boyd or the other girl, Cora. (Who was apparently Derek's younger sister) Slowly, I flew down, and saw that it wasn't one thing that had been moving, but two. Two children, hiding underneath a tree.

"It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you." I said as I landed. "Are you hurt?" The two children walked towards me. There was a girl and a boy, probably brother and sister since they looked much alike. From what I could see, they weren't wounded.

"Is he gone?" the boy whispered. I looked around and nodded.

"Did he try to attack you?" They nodded. "Did you see where he was going?" The boy shook his head and I nodded. "Alright, let's take you home." I walked towards them, happy to see that they'd relaxed a bit. "You don't have a fear of heights, do you?"

Flying around whilst carrying one child in your arms and one on your back was a truly… unique experience. Neither of them had a fear of heights, so that was good. Also, none of them puked on me, that was even better. The girl, who was on my back, told me where to go, whilst the boy spend his time mostly giggling, despite the things he'd just been through.

They lived on the edge of the woods, with their backyard leading into it. I set them down just outside the gate and made them promise not to go out in the woods this late again.

"Who are you?" the girl asked, tilting her head at me.

I chuckled. "Just a friend passing by. But you can't tell anyone about me, promise?" They nodded. "Alright, now be careful." I turned around and got ready to fly off, when the boy asked me something.

"Are you an angel?"

I laughed at that and shook my head. "I'm definitely not an angel."

"Oh." he pouted in disappointment before smiling. "I bet you'd be the best angel!"

"Just go inside, alright?" I asked, smiling. "Your parents must be worried sick." And then I flew off, smiling as I heard them yell 'goodbye'. That smile didn't last too long, though. There were still two werewolves on the loose.

Whilst I was flying, my phone started vibrating. Great. I flew up and sat down on a large branch before picking up.

"Hello?" I asked.

"It's Scott. Look, I just saw Cora rip apart a hut to get to three children who were playing inside of it. I don't think splitting up is a good idea."

"Okay, where do we meet?"

"I'm heading to the entrance of the preserve, Derek's there waiting for us."

"See you there." I said, hanging up. I winced as an ear piercing scream echoed through the woods. But of course, they didn't. It was Lydia. And this time, she was terrified. Without even a second of hesitation, I called her. When she picked up, her voice sounded even more terrified than her scream had.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Th- there's a… oh my God." she let out a sob. "I found a body."

I took a deep breath. "Okay, we've gone through this. I'm so sorry, but I can't come right now. Call Stiles, then call the sheriff. Stiles will take a first look and take some pictures before the police comes."

"I know, I know…" her voice was cracked.

"Just hang on, alright? Stiles will be there in a few minutes." With that, I hung up.

When I was almost at the meetup point, I heard someone screaming. This time, it wasn't Lydia. How many damn people could be in these woods? I flew over to the place where I thought the scream had come from and landed next to a tent. Judging by the light inside of it and the fire next to it, someone was planning on spending their night camping. Immediately after I set foot on the ground, someone jumped onto my back,pushing my down to the floor.

I tried to throw them off with my wings, but couldn't.

"Scott!" I yelled, hoping he'd hear me. Judging by the weight that was pressing down on me, it was Cora. I turned and tossed, clawing behind me until I managed to turn around, lying on my back instead of my front. Bad move. Cora started lashing out at my face. In her rage, she'd forgotten to secure my arms, so I could lash out right back. I was trying to knock her out, since that would really help the situation, but I just couldn't get them deep enough.

Then, the weight was suddenly lifted off me. Or thrown, actually.

"Lora, you okay?" someone yelled. I quickly jumped up to my feet. It was Isaac.

"Nothing that won't heal!" I ran towards him and Cora, who were in a fight. Lucky for us, Cora was now completely focused on Isaac, giving me the perfect oppurtunity to grab her by the shoulder and dig my nails into it. She let out a growl, but soon her knees gave in and she was lying on the ground, out of it.

"Wow…" Isaac said, looking at her. "That's… that's… useful…" he frowned as Cora's fangs retracted. "How long will she stay out?"

I shrugged. "About an hour?"

"You don't sound too sure…"

"Because I'm not." I said with a sigh. "I don't know how the moon's affecting them. Best we be quick about this." I was about to pick up Cora when Isaac pointed behind me. I frowned. "What?" I turned around and saw a terrified girl standing there, only a few years older than me. "Oh."

She was staring at us with an open mouth, and shaking. Perfect timing for Scott to come jumping out of the bushes, scaring the complete shit out of her. She let out a scream and made a run for it, only she tripped about two steps in.

"Great one, Scott." I said, walking towards her and crouching down in front of her. "Are you hurt?" I asked. She pushed herself up so she was sitting on her knees and shook her head. "Is anyone else hurt?"

"Wha- Emily. I- she was here and now… sh-she's gone and I…"

I nodded slowly and put a hand on her shoulder. "Okay, okay. It's okay. Look, you need to get out of these woods right now. We'll keep an eye open for your friend, but you can't go look for her. You need to go now." She nodded slowly and stood up. "Are you close to your car?" She nodded again. "Okay, good. Isaac will walk you there, he'll protect you. Now go." I nodded towards Isaac, who ran over and guided her away, towards her car. I let out a sigh and turned to Scott, who was looking at me in confusion.

"What?"

He shrugged. "Didn't know you could be so…"

I raised an eyebrow. "So what?"

"You best not end that sentence." Derek said. He'd picked up Cora and looked about ready to go. "I'll get her to my loft, she'll be safe there. That boy Jason put a shiftroom in the attic. You go look for Boyd." We nodded and he ran off, leaving just me and Scott, who sighed.

"How are we going to catch Boyd?" I frowned at the way he said it, like he was ready to take orders.

"I have a plan, but… I don't have the right equipment yet. Jason is coming over in a few days, he'll drop off some stuff but until then… I've got almost nothing."

Scott nodded. "Okay, what do you have?"

"Mountain ash, wolfsbane… " I shook my head. "Couple of knives, a gun that I managed to sneak onto the plane…"

"You took a gun onto a plane?" Scott exclaimed and I rolled my eyes.

"Do we really have time for this?"

"Well, what do we do?"

I let out a reluctant sigh and looked at my feet. I really hated this plan, but it was the best I could come up with. When I looked back up, I saw that Scott had figured it out as well, judging by the semi-horrified look on his face.

"We've got to find Chris Argent."

 **A/N: Hope you enjoyed that! There's plenty more to come ;) My intention is for Lorraine to really start influencing the story from now on, making it different from the series.**

 **As always, thanks for reading and I'll see you in the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	9. Chapter eight

**Chapter eight: This town is fucked up, man**

Scott and I ran out of the woods, towards the edge of the preserve. Lord and behold, Derek had left with his car. Great.

"We don't have enough time to find him whilst running." Scott said.

I nodded. "True, but wh-" My eyes widened as he gave me a pleading look. "No. No way."

But I'd already made up my mind, and Scott knew it, as he smirked at me.

Once Scott claimed that we were close to Chris, we landed. Landed meaning that I dropped him from ten feet up in the air and then landed myself.

"That was for making me carry you." I said when he groaned in pain. "Now where is he?" Scott stuck his nose up in the air, sniffing it. The plain idiocy of it made me shake my head.

"This way." he said, running towards a parking lot of a grocery store about a hundred yards away. I let out a sigh, retracted my wings and ran after him.

~o~

We were crouching behind a parked car, discussing how we'd approach him.

"I'll do it." Scott said and I scoffed.

"Yeah sure, let the werewolf go talk to the hunter." I whispered.

"Fair point." he nodded. "But your families don't go together that well either."

I sighed. "True. But I'm still not letting you do it." I stood up and walked towards Chris' car. He was standing behind it, loading in groceries.

Not wanting to startle him, I cleared my throat. "Mister Argent?" His head shot up, and he had a gun pointing at me within a second. I held my hands up in the air, showing I had nothing on me.

"Easy with the gun, dude. You're going to give someone a heart attack one day."

He let out a sigh and lowered his gun, but he was still glaring at me. "What do you want?"

"Just a little bit of help." I lowered my hands. "There's an Alpha pack in town. They kidnapped Cora, Derek's sister, and Boyd, his beta. They kept them out of the full moon for months and now they're out here, in Beacon Hills, ready to tear apart anyone that they cross paths with."

"And why would I care about anyone related to Derek?" he asked. "I don't even know Cora, or this kid Boyd. I don't even know his last name."

I shrugged. "And neither do I. I don't even know one tenth of the population of Beacon Hills. Doesn't mean I want them ripped apart by werewolves!"

Chris let out a sigh. "Look, Lora, th-"

"Lorraine." I interrupted.

"Fine. Lorraine. I watched my grandfather brainwash my daughter. Almost turn her into a killer."

"You're welcome, by the way." I said. She'd been a killer if it hadn't been for me and he knew it. So he nodded and thanked me, briefly.

"But that world decimated mine. My wife, father, sister. My entire family. You should know how that feels. Why would I ever want to step into that world again?"

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. "Because you can't just step out of it. And even if you think you have, you haven't. Because you know it's out there. You know that there's people out there who don't know, people who need to be protected. Because if you like it or not, that's what our families are all about. Protecting people. We just do it in different ways." I sighed. "I'm not asking you to come with us if you don't want to. I just need supplies."

We looked at each other in silence for a while. A silence that was interrupted by my phone vibrating. I clenched my teeth and took it out. Pictures from Stiles. First, of the body Lydia had found. Then, a man and a female standing crying over a bodybag that was about to be put into an ambulance. I turned my phone around and showed the picture to Chris.

"You can't just walk away from this."

Chris' jaw clenched and I knew he'd made his decision. He was going to help us.

Now came the tricky part. The actual plan. We met up with Derek and Isaac, and started explaining it.

Chris and I had figured since we could likely not catch Boyd, and definitely not kill him, we'd had to contain him. Best place being the boiler room at the school. (Which, as Isaac had pointed out, had no windows and one big steel door) We'd use ultrasonic emitters to drive him towards the school, from which point we'd lead him to the boiler room.

All I had to do was fly half a mile, place an emitter, and fly another half a mile, place an emitter, and so on. That would've been very simple, hadn't it been for a very unwanted interruption.

"You're blaming this on yourself, right?"

I clenched my jaw shut and turned around to face Peter. "Piss off."

"It's not your fault, you know. That Allison kid shouldn't have broken the line of mountain ash." he was slowly walking towards me.

I squinted my eyes at him. "How'd you know? Oh wait, I don't care. Piss off!" I pushed the button on top of the emitter, turning it on.

"I've always wondered why your family, lovely people as they are, bother so much. So what if Boyd and Cora kill a few homeless people? It's the Alpha pack you should be worrying about."

"Who says I can't do both? And by the way, we've already caught Cora" I spread my wings, ready to take off, when Peter grabbed me by the wrist.

"Believe it or not, but I actually care about some people. And I don't want Derek to join their pack." I pulled myself loose and flew up into the air. I had no intent on chit chatting with Peter, I'd already wasted enough time on him.

~o~

Everything was set. Isaac stood outside of the school, Derek inside. I was on the roof, Scott and Chris were… on their way. Okay, so mabye not everything was set. But it was good enough and we were running out of time. How I knew? Well the maniac werewolf jumping onto the roof of the school was a big hint.

He were about as surprised to see me as I was to see them, which… gave neither of us an advantage really.

"Come on then!" I yelled, spreading my wings. When he charged for me, I ran towards the edge of the roof and jumped off, onto one of the school buses. Then, I flew up and away a few feet. Which was a good thing, considering I heard him jump onto the bus just as I jumped off. He then jumped after me, but I just flew back, so he landed on the ground.

"Fly up!" someone yelled. I hesitated, but the shot up a good distance into the air. It was then that arrows started being fired towards Boyd, creating loud whistle sounds and flashes of light at his feet. I turned around, expecting Chris to be standing there. Instead, it was Allison. She stopped firing for a second so Boyd could start running away,conveniently, into the school. As soon as they went through the door opening, Isaac jumped out of the darkness and locked it.

"Don't tell my dad." Allison said, after which she ran away, leaving me and Isaac looking at each other in slight confusion.

"Will we?" Isaac asked me. I sighed and shook my head. No, we wouldn't. I then looked up at the sky. The sun would come out in round and about ten minutes. If everything went according to plan, Derek and Scott would've locked Boyd up in the boiler room by now, and Chris would be gathering the emitters in the woods. Now all we had to do was wait for sunrise. Which was what we had to do now. Wait.

Of course, my phone just had to start going off again.

~o~

I practically ran into the hospital, where Stiles and Melissa were waiting for me. Stiles' eyes were watery and Melissa looked worried.

"What happened?" I asked as I walked towards them. They didn't say anything, Stiles just took my hand and guided me through the hallways, following Melissa. "Are you alright?" I whispered to him. Not only could I now see that he'd been crying, his grip on my hand was worringly tight.

"I'm fine." he whispered as we stopped in front of a door labelled 'morgue'. This couldn't be good. We walked inside, where two bodies lied, covered by a blue sheet, on metallic tables. Melissa stood next to one of them, about to take off the sheet when she hesitated.

"I'm sorry, but did she...?" she looked from Stiles to me.

Stiles shook his head. "No, well yes, but she can't remember."

"Remember what?" I asked, looking at them with a frown. Melissa let out a sigh and took the sheet off the body, revealing a now very pale blonde girl. My heart sank to my stomach as the pieces fell together. It was Heather.

"I'm so sorry." I whispered, my voice shaky. Which wouldn't usually be considered weird, but my voice didn't get shaky easily. Something was wrong. I squeezed Stiles' hand lightly before pulling myself loose from his grasp. I walked to the body, inspecting it.

"Her throat was cut, her head smashed in, and she was also strangled." Melissa

pointed at a bruising line above the slash in Heather's throat. Just looking at the girl made me nauseous. Which I thought I could handle, even though it was odd. Then I started gagging.

"Woah, okay, okay." Melissa quickly covered up the body and walked me away from it. "Sorry, I thought you could handle…"

"I can!" I sighed. "Or I could… I just…" I looked over at the two bodies again. "The other body, does it have the same injuries?"

"Yeah, it does." Stiles said. "And there's more."

I frowned. "More bodies?"

Stiles shook his head. "No, more connections. The guy, he had a purity ring. You said Heather didn't want to be a seventeen-year-old virgin, an-"

"I did?" I asked. Man I was drunk.

"Yeah, you talked to her friends that night." he said, waving it off. "Anyway, now there's another girl missing. She and her girlfriend were camping in the woods-"

"I know." I internally cursed myself for not thinking more of the girl's disappearance, focusing too much on Boyd. "Cora paid their camping spot a little visit. But the girl was gone by then." I looked up as Stiles. "She a virgin too?" Stiles nodded.

"Stiles said something about a threefold death." Melissa said. "That mean anything to you?"

"Blow to the head, slash in the throat, suffocated by garotte." I recited. "It's a sacrificing ritual. Maybe that's why I feel like throwing up." I shook my head when they frowned at me. "They died before their time. I should've done something about it."

"Well, I don't know about you, but keeping track of all the deaths in a town like this seems like way too much pressure for a teenager." Melissa patted me on the back. "Let's get you two out of here."

~o~

I'd just taken a shower when I walked into Stiles' room, drying my hair with a towel. What I hadn't expected to find was a big pinboard with newspaper articles, pictures, and different coloured threads pinned to it.

"Stiles, what the hell are you doing?" I asked. Stiles was standing next to the board, using a red piece of string to connect two articles. He looked up at me, back to the board, and then to me.

"Oh, yeah, I'm trying to figure out if anything else like this has happened before." he gestured at the board. "Sacrifices, alpha packs…" He frowned, so I assumed an idea popped up in his mind. "Could they be doing sacrifices to grow more powerful?"

"I…" I frowned. "Don't know. It's possible. If they found out a way to do that, maybe using an object to channel power from the sacrifice to themselves. But in that case they probably did it before and…" I walked over to the board and looked at it. Several newspaper articels that could be about a threefold death, all across the country. Pieces of red and orange string were scattered across the board, two rolls of blue and green string were left untouched on the floor.

Stiles noticed my looking at them. "Green means solved, orange means working on it, red means that I don't have a clue." he sighed. "I mostly use red. Oh and I-"

"Just like blue, yeah I know." I chuckled. "That's a pretty good system you've got here."

Stiles scratched the back of his neck. "Yeah, I got it from dad. So, any further thoughts?" He looked at me, and I could just tell he was anticipating something.

"I... " I frowned and turned my head to the board. "Try to track where the pack has been, and see if there's a pattern with the sacrifices?" I turned my head again and saw Stiles smiling at me. I smiled back, but then let out a scoff. "You're testing me? Me?"

"Just wanted to see what you'd suggest." he said innocently.

I shook my head. "Idiot."

Stiles put his arm over my shoulder. "Nah, you love me."

I frowned. "Was that a question?"

"Maybe."

I smiled and leaned my head against his shoulder. "The answer's yes."

We stood there for a moment in silence, staring at the board in front of us. Then, Stiles suddenly tensed up.

"What?" I asked.

"What if it's not connected?" Stiles said. He removed his hand from my shoulder and stepped closer to the board, as if he could understand it better when close to it. "What if… there's someone else out there? You said yourself, the Alpha pack is incredibly strong, they, they take over their Beta's powers. Why would they need the sacrifices?" He shook his head.

I nodded. "Fair point. But that begs the question, because if the Alpha pack isn't doing it..." I crouched down to level with a picture on the bottom of the board. It was a picture of Heather, as I'd seen her in the morgue. "Then who is killing these people?"

~o~

I hurried through the school corridors. I'd just changed into my clothes for PE when Stiles texted me to come to the boys' changing room. When I got there, I immediately took notice of two things: Dozens of shirtless guys who didn't seem fazed with me coming into the room, and Stiles' talking.

"You know who else is a virgin? Me! I'm a virgin, okay? And this now means that the lack of sexual experience is now literally a threat to my life!"

I walked towards Stiles, who was standing behind the door of Danny's locker, so he couldn't see me. Danny was standing in front of me, but he didn't say anything when he noticed me putting my finger to my lips.

"Then why don't you ask Lorraine?" Scott said, obviously not taking it serious. At that moment, Danny shut his locker and walked away. The sound of the locker closing made Stiles look around, which gave me the perfect timing.

"Yeah Stiles, why didn't you just say you wanted to have sex?"

"Woah!" Stiles yelled, stumbling back. "Lora! You… came faster than I expected."

"Only if you do your job right." I said, patting him on his shoulder as I walked past him, towards Scott. "What happened?"

Scott sighed. "There was this client at the clinic last night. After his appointment he just disappeared, leaving his car and dog. Stiles thinks he's dead."

I nodded. "Probably." I then winced as the now familiar sound of ringing echoed through my ears. Only now it was louder than it'd ever been. I felt someone keeping me from falling down, but since I'd closed my eyes I didn't know who. And as quick as it'd come, the ringing was gone. I found myself sitting on the floor, with Stiles, Scott, and Isaac (I don't know where the hell he'd come from) looking at me in worry.

"Scratch the probably." I said, pulling myself up. "He's dead."

Stiles opened his mouth to say something, but Coach beat him to it. "Alright! For all the lacrosse players in here: No, cross-country is not optional. I don't want you all turning into a bunch of fat-" he stopped as he spotted me. "Hield, what are you doing here?"

I shrugged. "Making sure Stillinski keeps going, even though he's so unfit, he can barely run up the stairs?"

Coach tilted his head and pointed a finger at me. "You, I like you. You can stay." He grinned before leaving the room.

"You okay?" Isaac asked, frowning ever so slightly at me.

"Fine." I muttered. Most people were leaving the room, following coach outside. "Let's go."

~o~

Everyone was standing in one big group, ready to go. The cross country was in an area just outside of the school, near the woods. I was standing at the back of the group, next to Stiles. In the left front corner of the group was Isaac, tying his shoelaces. Two older guys, who were so alike that they must've been twins, walked up to him. Isaac's head shot up, and I frowned as I watched the three. They didn't say or do anything, but there seemed to be some sort of tension hanging around them.

"Who are they?" I asked Stiles, pointing at the twins. He looked over and then back at me.

"The Alpha twins." he said, sounding indifferent. When I stared at him with wide eyes, his mouth fell open. "Oh. You didn't know about the Alpha twins, did you? Ah…"

"How the fu-" I was interrupted by Coach's whistle, which signalled the start of the run. The twins shot forward, already way ahead of the rest of the group. Soon, Isaac shot up and went a after them.

"Let's go!" I yelled, then pulled Stiles after me. It soon became evident that he wouldn't be able to keep up. Isaac and the twins were nowhere to be seen within one minute, and soon Scott followed. "Stiles…" I looked back at him. His face was red, he was panting so hard I thought he might fall down on the spot. I sighed. "Nevermind." We were ahead of the group, so we continued in a slower pace. I just hoped that Scott and Isaac could handle themselves.

We turned around a sharp corner which led to a path that went as good as straight ahead for a decent mile. Which begged the question: Where were Isaac, Scott, and the twins?

Stiles stopped, and I figured he noticed too. "Lora…"

I nodded. "I know. Where are they?"

He shook his head. "No, not that." There was a shaking in his voice that made me turn around in concern. He pointed to the side of the path. There was a body bound to a tree. The guy's neck was bleeding, the blood still trickling down his chest a bit. I didn't need to look at it any longer to know that he'd been another sacrifice. How? Well that fucking nausea came up again, this time even worse than the last.

Stiles had seen it coming, and he'd already put his hands on my shoulders, keeping me from swaying.

I tried to pull myself loose. "I'm fine."

Even though I couldn't see him, I was sure Stiles rolled his eyes. "Yeah sure."

I sighed. "Call you dad."

It didn't take long for the others to catch up with us. Which ensued the usual "holy fucking fuck there's a fucking dead body lets all scream and stare at it" drama.

Lucky for us, it didn't take very long for the sheriff and his deputies to show up either.

"Alright, clear the area, before anyone tramples the evidence!" the sheriff said as he walked up to us. "You guys okay?"

Meanwhile, Stiles updated his dad on the situation. "Look dad, it's the same injuries. Threefold death."

"Yes, I can see that, so why don't you two go and be teenagers?" he gently pushed us away from the scene, after which he and the other deputies cleared the area. Stiles and I let out a collective sigh before walking away, when we were joined by Scott and Isaac.

"Let me guess:" I sighed. "You got into a fight with the twins?"

Isaac winced. "Jup."

I shook my head and let out a bitter laugh. "Those fuckers are going to pay for that shit."

"But did you see the looks on their faces?" Stiles asked, frowning at us. "They were just as surprised as we were."

Isaac stopped and frowned. "No, they looked like they knew exactly what had happened." They looked at me and Scott for help.

I shrugged. "I didn't seem them."

"Yeah, and neither did I." Scott said, shaking his head. "Look, I don't know, okay?"

"I don't- Scott! Am I the only one here that's noticing the non-werewolfiness of these murders?" Stiles looked at the three of us in despair.

Isaac scoffed. "So the second they turn up people start dying and that's just a coincidence?"

"It might be!" Stiles said, turning to me and Scott. "Come on…"

Scott shrugged. "Like I said, I don't know. Isaac's got a good point. I mean, human sacrifices?"

Stiles' jaw fell open. "Scott, your eyes are like two yellow glowsticks, you've got hair that grows out of your cheeks, and then somehow grows back again," he held his hands up to his cheeks, "and if I were to stab you right now, it would just magically heal, but you're trying to tell me you've got a problem grasping the concept of human sacrifices?" he exclaimed.

Scott turned to Isaac, his mouth hanging slightly open. "He's got a good point too."

Isaac shook his head. "I don't care. They killed that guy and they killed the girl that saved me. And now I'm going to kill them." he stalked off, but I ran after him.

"Isaac!" I put my hand on his shoulder. "Don't. I know you're angry, and if they're the ones who did this, they can't get away with it. But you're being irrational. Two werewolves, who are Alpha's, mind you, against one Beta." I let out a sigh as Isaac visibly relaxed. "Good. Now-" I winced as the ringing came back to my ears. "Shit."

"Lora?" Stiles ran up to us. "Lora, what's wrong?"

As soon as the ringing had come, it left. I shook my head. "Nothing. It's fine now." But I somehow knew that that wasn't the case. Someone had died.

"You sure?" he asked, his eyes scanning me from head to toe as if that would give him more certainty. I just nodded again. "Okay, good… how about we go to the library?"

I nodded at that. With all the human sacrifices and the Alpha pack, my schoolwork was… only just enough. Stiles was helping me but he also had his hands full trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

I turned to Isaac. "The twins now know that you're easily wound up now, they might try to do it again."

He tensed up again. "And I'm just supposed to let them?"

I smirked. "Fuck no. Just giving you a heads up so you have more time to come up with a plan." I patted him on the back. "Give 'em hell, kid." After that, Stiles and I headed for the library. It was when we arrived that Lydia called out for help.

 **A/N: There we go! Chapter eight. I do like this chapter more than the last few, and I like the ones that are coming up even more.**

 **Speaking of which, I've been very busy with school and work lately. I suck at time management so I haven't had the chance to write all that much. Usually I write a few chapters ahead and keep it that way, but I haven't even finished the next one. The point of all this is that I might be a day late with uploading the new chapters, or there might come a week where I can't upload at all.**

 **But I'm trying, that's for certain :)**

 **As always, thank you al so so much for reading, and I'll see you in the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	10. Chapter nine

**Chapter nine: Progress**

Stiles and I ran for the music room as soon as Lydia called out for help in my mind. (That sounds so fucking weird) When we got there, she was staring at the teacher's piano in horror.

"Lydia?" I asked as I ran towards her. "Lydia, what's wrong?"

"He's taken." she whispered. I turned around to look at the piano myself. Apart from the small tablet that had a recording on it, it was just a piano. Lydia then stepped forward and pushed down the wood, so it covered the keys. On the wood were five scratches, obviously made by human nails. They were surrounded by blood.

"Yeah, that's not good." Stiles said. I rolled my eyes and nudged him on the shoulder.

"And that's not helping." I sighed. "I think you're right, Stiles. This is definitely not the work of a werewolf." I picked up the tablet from the piano and pressed play. Instead of piano sounds, there came a soft chanting from the tablet that grew louder by the second. "Banshees often use sounds. Not just their own screams." I put it back down. "Lydia would've found the body, not the tablet."

"So what do we do?" Stiles asked, looking at me.

Before answering that question, I looked at Lydia. "You did great, alright?" She nodded and wiped away a few tears. Even though she was taking the whole banshee thing incredibly well, she was still pretty shaken. I then turned to Stiles. "Let's call Deaton. You know how I told you he was a druid?" Stiles nodded. "Well, he's like a newer version of it. Or was, anyway. Emissaries, we call them. But the science of the druids, it's all still there. Including…"

"Sacrifices?" Lydia asked, and I nodded.

"Let's just hope that he knows something we don't." I sighed.

"What do you know?" Lydia asked. I looked at Stiles, who scratched the back of his neck.

"We think the killer might be a druid."

~o~

"The word 'druid' means 'wise oak' in Gaelic." Deaton explained. "They were philosophers, scholars. They believed they kept nature in balance." he looked at us. "They weren't serial killers."

"Yeah, well this one is," Stiles said.

"Why would a druid perform a human sacrifice?" I asked.

Deaton shrugged. "Could be for any number of reasons. But here I think it's to get power. There were three virgin sacrifices, but now that pattern's broken. Each group that follows will have it's own powers. Healers, philosophers, warriors…"

I frowned. "Did you say warrior?" Deaton nodded. "Scott said that the guy that disappeared after visiting the clinic had a military family." I ran over to the teacher's desk and started rummaging through it until I found a picture. On it was only one man, which I presumed was the teacher, in a military uniform. I ran back and showed it to Stiles and Lydia. "We've found our group."

"Now we need to find the third victim." Stiles said, frowning in thought. "I gotta make a call." he started making his way to the hallway when Lydia spoke up.

"Mister Harries has a military background." she said. None of us needed any further information. If Harries was the first one to come up in Lydia's head, then he was the next sacrifice.

"We need to warn him." Stiles said, stuffing his phone in his pocket before walking a few steps. He stopped when he noticed we weren't following him. "What?"

"Banshees, they… they don't predict abduction, Stiles." I turned towards him. "They predict deaths. Something tells me we won't need to hurry over to his office." I paused. "Harries is gone."

And indeed he was. We arrived in an empty classroom, with Harries' bag still standing next to his desk. We decided to look for anything that might give us even the smallest clue.

"This test is rated 'R'" Stiles said as he held up a test. And indeed, there was a big red R in the top right corner.

"This one's an 'H'" Lydia said, holding up another one.

Deaton walked over and started looking through the papers. He eventually took the top six that had been lying on the pile and sighed. "Remember when I said that druid meant 'wise oak'?" We nodded. "Well sometimes, when a druid went down the wrong path, the wise oak would become a dark one. There's a Gaelic word for that too." He spread out the papers. On each one was a bright red letter in the top right corner. "Darach."

I sighed. "So we've got a dark druid on our hands?"

"A dark, homicidal druid." Lydia added.

"Afraid so…" Deaton said.

~o~

It was around ten 'o'clock in the evening, and I was fucking tired. Not all cutey sleepy where you cuddle up in a sweatshirt. No, I was fucking tired to the point that a triple espresso had no effect and I was moody as shit. Stiles managed to convince me to just lie down and leave my homework for what it was whilst he finished his (though I suspected he would do mine as well without telling me)

So I got changed and went to bed, but I just couldn't sleep. It was a nightmare, honestly, but the light in the room kept me in a state between sleep and being awake. That's why I noticed the knock on the door.

"Dad, co-" Stiles stopped. "What are you doing here?" he whispered.

"I need to talk to Lora." What the hell was Isaac doing here?

"Well you can't, she's sleeping."

"Oh. Well… I need a favour. Derek kicked me out."

"Wha- why?"

"I don't know, okay? Listen, can I stay here for the night? "

Silence.

Stiles sighed. "Alright, fine. Just one night, okay?"

"Thank you."

"I'll get you a blanket and a pillow, but keep it down, will you? My dad is on night shift at the station, so he won't be back until eight am."

"Thanks. Oh and by the way, you are aware that as Lora's male best friend, I will rip you apart if you hurt her, right?"

Even from the other side of the room I could hear Stiles gulp. "Noted. And I hope you are aware that I can kick your little werewolf ass out of my house any time I'd like."

"Noted."

~o~

 _The day after_

I'd just sat down in my car (which I'd got back) after detention (long story) when someone grabbed me by the hair and pulled me back. I struggled and was quick to pull out my knife, but just when I'd got a good grip, I felt something sharp and cold pressed against my throat.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." From the corner of my eye I saw a tall man with grey hair sit down in the seat next to me. He was wearing sunglasses and had a british accent. Deucalion, the leader of the Alpha pack. "Even though Akali prefers her claws, she can do some decent damage with a knife." I relaxed into my seat and Deucalion nodded. Soon the knife was lifted from my throat.

"Now," he said, "Let's discuss some business."

"What do you want from me?" I asked. Even though I couldn't do anything, I was making damn sure that he knew how I felt about the situation with my tone. Which was pissed.

"I want you to not interfere." Even though he couldn't see me, I narrowed my eyes at him.

"Or what?"

He pouted. "You haven't even asked me what I'd give you for it!"

"I don't want anything from you."

"Oh but I think you do. And, just to give you a taste of it…" My hair was let go of, but before I could do anything, Deucalion pushed my head down. Fucking hell, the man nearly broke my neck. I felt my hair being swept of my neck, followed by the unmistakable feeling of claws being put in my neck.

~o~

I was running. But I wasn't scared, or angry… no I'm pretty sure I was giggling the whole time. Then, someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me up into the air.

"Got you!" Dad yelled in victory as he swung my over his shoulder and started running away.

"Don't you dare break our little girl's neck!" Mom yelled, though she laughed as well. "Come on, dinner's ready!" Dad put me back down on the ground and together we walked to the kitchen table.

"Bet you can't beat me." Stiles challenged Scott. We were sitting on the couch at Stiles' house, playing some sort of video game.

"No I can!" Scott protested, and on they went. Of course, Stiles beat Scott.

"Let me try." I said, taking the controller from Scott. Stiles looked a bit reluctant, but we fought a match nonetheless. Which I won.

Scott let out a laugh whilst Stiles pouted. The younger me was laughing too, but I felt the need to frown. Stiles had played way better when he went up against Scott. Had he let me win?

"Stiles, that's enough gaming!" Stiles' mother, Claudia, walked into the room. "Go play outside, you can continue after dinner."

I was sitting alone in the livingroom of the Hale house, waiting for Mom. Dad was working at the institute and Mom had to talk to Thalia, Derek's mom.

"Hey Lora, do you want to go play catch with us?" I looked over at the door opening, where Peter and Derek were standing. I nodded, stood up and ran after them. When we walked into the yard, I bumped into Deaton.

"Oh, careful there." he said, steadying me. "Don't want to you to fall, do we?"

"What are they talking about?" I asked, looking at the house. "Why can't we be there?"

"That's something for the grownups, Lora. You can know when you're older."

I looked up at him. "So I can be at the meetups with mom and dad when I'm older?" Deaton smiled, nodded, and then went back indoors.

~o~

I let out a gasp and instantly reached for the back of my neck, which was now covered in blood.

"You can think about it." Deucalion said, getting out of the car.

Just before he could close the door, I managed to speak. "Why don't you just kill me then? Why go through all this trouble?"

Deucalion hesitated. "Because your family and I were once friends. But if you don't accept my offer, and you do interfere… let's just say that Kali will have some fun with some of your friends." And with that, he closed the door. Behind me, Kali got out of the car as well, and by the time I'd calmed down a bit, they were gone. I looked around, and there was no one there. Still, I didn't want to risk being seen by a teacher who'd stayed at school late. So I started my car and drove off.

After a few minutes of driving and trying to think of a way to explain to Stiles what had just happened, I decided to call Lydia.

" _How was detention?"_ she asked as soon as she picked up.

I rolled my eyes. "Great, thanks. Listen… I've got a bit of an issue. I'm going to need to borrow one of your scarves."

" _My scarves?"_ She sounded confused.

"Let's just say that I had a little run-in with Deucalion, who decided to put his claws in my neck." I sighed. "He's the one who took away my memories, the one my dad took me to." Lydia didn't say anything. "He offered them back in exchange for me not interfering with what's going on with Derek and the Alpha pack."

" _And? Are you going to take it?"_

"I don't know," I said with a sigh. "But I've got some nasty bleeding going on, and since Deucalion is one of the most powerful Alpha's out there, I doubt that it'll heal quickly." My stomach turned into a knot. "I don't want Stiles to worry any more than he already does."

" _Nothing good comes from keeping secrets, Lora."_ Lydia warned me. " _You said so yourself."_

"I know… I just." I took a deep breath. "I need time to think."

" _Okay, if you say so."_

~o~

I played with the end of the simple black scarf Lydia had given me as I did my homework. Or at least tried to. For most of my classes I was just managing to keep my head above the water. Different types of cells throughout the human body definitely wasn't my area of expertise.

"How's the homework coming along?" Stiles asked as he entered the bedroom. I let out a groan, which was enough information for him. 'Need any help?" Before I could even say something, he was standing next to me, bent over my homework.

"How about you tell me what correlation the shape of a red blood cell has to it's function?" I said as I leaned back in my chair.

"Well…" he said, pointing at an image of said cell as he started to explain. Eventually he got an extra chair so he could sit next to me. And, after an hour or two, I got it. I actually, finally understood what the fuck was in my textbook.

"Thank you." I said, smiling at him. "You just saved my sorry ass."

Stiles shrugged, through his cheeks grew a bit red. "It's nothing."

I rolled my eyes and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "I'm gonna go shower." Stiles nodded as I stood up and walked out of the room.

"What's for dinner?" he yelled after me.

"Not your housekeeper!" I yelled back, waiting a second before yelling. "Lasagna!" I chuckled as I heard Stiles cheer at that.

~o~

Usually, I was very quick at taking showers. Jump in, jump out. Only this time, I spent God knows how long cleaning the wounds at the back of my neck. Though the chances of infection were small, I wasn't taking any chances. I'd just put on my underwear when Stiles walked into the bathroom, scaring the living daylight out of me.

Even though I'd only gasped a bit, Stiles' head snapped towards me. He hadn't known I was still in there.

He quickly covered his eyes with his hand. "Oh my- I'm so sorry."

I shook my head and sighed. "Stiles, it's fine. It's just my underwear," I said as I put on my pyjamas." Still, he kept his eyes covered. My heart jumped a bit as I realised I wasn't wearing my scarf. I quickly wrapped it around my neck before walking towards Stiles, who was trying to blindly find his was back to the door.

"Stiles," I said, slowly putting one hand on his shoulder. "It's fine. I've put on my clothes." He slowly took his hand off his face, revealing his cheeks to be a bright red. "Though it's cute that you're so flustered." I said, kissing him. It took a while for him to react, but he then pulled me closer and wrapped his arms around my waist. After a while I pulled back, gasping for breath.

"Then again… your dad's on night shift again, isn't he?"

Stiles frowned. "Well, yeah, bu-" His eyes widened. "Oh!"

I rolled my eyes and laughed. "Yeah."

"Oh! Yeah, yes, sure. If- if you want t-" I cut him off with another kiss.

And I'll be fucking damned if I tell you the rest of that night.

Unfortunately, there were more things going down that night. ...Oh God not like that, I didn't mean it like that. Turns out, Derek, Boyd, Cora, Isaac and Scott went to attack the Alpha pack.

Only they had expected their visit.

It was the middle of the night when I got the call. By chance, I hadn't turned off my ringtone. When I picked up the phone, Isaac was on the other side. Even though he only spoke two words, the amount of pain he was in became evident from them.

"Derek's dead."

 **A/N: *Dramatic music* If any of you are wondering, I feel like Derek wouldn't pull Lora into the whole thing. With her father there, yes, he would probably have asked for help, but I think that he wouldn't see it as her fight. That's why Lora wasn't there. Also if she were there, she still couldn't bring herself to do much but injure others.**

 **This chapter isn't quite as long as I usually want mine to be, but hey, sometimes you just gotta... I don't even know. I hoped you enjoyed it nonetheless.**

 **Thanks for reading, and until the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	11. Chapter ten

**Chapter ten: Frayed**

"How many more were found?" I asked Stiles, who'd just gotten of the phone with his dad.

Stiles sighed. "Just the two of them. Harries and the music teacher." He looked at me. "We can't tell anyone, though. Dad says they're keeping it a secret, not to cause too much worry."

I buried my head in my hands. "That's… how many total?"

"You mean so far?" Stiles looked at the cork board. "Six." The number felt like getting punched in the stomach. Six people we didn't save. "We don't know which group is next."

"Maybe healers?" I guessed, before shrugged. "Oh I don't know." I pushed myself off the bed, which I had been sitting on, and walked towards the board. "We don't even know for sure what groups are left." I paused, in thought. "Mabey-"

"You should come with us on the cross-country?" Stiles finished my sentence for me. "We should have someone here keeping an eye out." His eyes widened for a second, but he tried to cover that up quickly enough. "Never mind, you can come."

I frowned at him. "Why did you change your mind?"

Stiles shook his head. "Nothing."

"No, what is it?"

"Nothing!"

I squinted my eyes at him, and then I realised. "You don't want to leave me behind!" I laughed as he started blushing. "Stiles, I can handle myself, really." With a smug smile I went back to looking at the board.

Then Stiles smirked. "So you want to come so you can keep an eye on me?" Now it was his turn to laugh when I blushed. "Got you!" He then frowned all of a sudden. "Lora?"

"Stiles?" I mimicked his voice.

"Why didn't you lock the door last night when you took a shower?" I froze at the question. Stiles mistook my silence for not understanding. "It's just that it isn't very you to forget to lock the door." He then looked at me and saw my discomfort on my face. "What's wrong?"

I sighed. "Thing is… I…" I started scratching my temple. "Am sort of…" I groaned in frustration. "I can't stand the thought of being in a locked room, alright? Not since… y'know."

Stiles nodded and put his arm around my shoulder, pulling me closer. "I know. It's okay."

I sighed, glad that he didn't ask any further questions. "Thanks." It was then that the alarm on my phone went off. I took my phone out and stopped the alarm. "Time to go."

~o~

Scott, Stiles, and I were sitting on the backseat of the bus. Stiles, who was sitting to my left, had his Ipad with him and he was asking Scott, who was again sitting to his left, next to the window, the definition of words.

"Scotty, you still with me?" Stiles asked, snapping his finger in front of Scott's face. I leaned forward to take a look at him. He was completely spaced out, but that wasn't what bothered me. He had one arm folded over his abdomen, his hand grabbing a part of his side. I opened my mouth to say something about it, when Scott snapped out of his daydream.

"Yeah, sorry, what's the word?"

"Anachronism." Stiles said.

Scott shook his head a little, waking himself up. "Something that exists out of it's time."

Stiles nodded. "Correct. Next word," he swiped left on the ipad, "incongruous."

Scott frowned as he groaned a little, trying to sit up straight. "Ehm, can you use it in a sentence?"

"Yeah, sure. It's completely incongruous that we're sitting on a bus right now on our way to some stupid cross-country meet after what just happened, incongruous."

Scott nodded along, "Out of place, ridiculous, absurd."

"Perfect." Stiles said, doing a thumbs up.

"It's not that absurd," I said, "The darach likely knows about you. Had we stayed in Beacon Hills whilst still recovering, both the Alpha pack and ours would be too busy to focus on the darach." I frowned. "I think."

Stiles frowned at me. "Why 'you think'?"

I shook my head. "Something's wrong." The bus drove over a bump, sending us all flying forwards a bit. I coughed a little as the seatbelt pushed the air out of my lungs, but Scott full on groaned in pain. Now I knew that there was something wrong.

"Scott, did you get hurt last night?" I asked, but he just shook his head and told me he was fine. I rolled my eyes, leaned over Stiles so I could grab Scott's arm and pull it off his abdomen, revealing a dark red stain in his shirt. "You should've told me."

"It's fine." Scott said, putting his arm back over the stain. "Just takes longer to heal because it's from an Alpha."

I shook my head and went back to my own seat. "Scott, it's still bleeding. It should have at least stopped bleeding."

"Then why didn't it?" Stiles asked and I shook my head yet again.

"I don't know." I then sighed. "I'm gonna talk to Lydia." I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes, concentrating.

"Lydia?" Scott asked.

"Yeah, she and Allison have been driving a few cars behind us for a few hours now." Stiles scoffed. "Pathetic."

" _Lydia?"_ I asked. " _Can you hear me?"_ Silence. " _Lydia, I know you're driving behind us, now answer me."_

" _Hi…"_

" _Scott's hurt and he's not healing. Any guesses why?"_

" _Wh- hold on."_ Even though she was talking to Allison, she still let me hear it. " _Scott's hurt, and Lora says he's not healing. Do you know any reasons that could happen?"_ Silence. " _She doesn't know either."_

" _Okay, I'm going to try and get coach to stop at the next resting place, meet us there."_ I sighed before breaking off our conversation, after which I opened my eyes to see Stiles staring at me expectantly.

"And?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Nothing. But even someone who isn't a werewolf could survive that wound. If he won't heal supernaturally, I'll just have to do it the normal way." Stiles nodded and leant back in his seat, though he wasn't at rest. Oh who am I kidding, that dude's never at rest.

"Okay, so how a- whoa!" I grabbed hold of the first thing I could as I flew forward. Stupid buses had no seatbelts, and we'd suddenly stopped. Traffic jam. I looked left to see that I'd grabbed hold of Stiles' arm, which he'd put out in front of me to keep me from falling forward. "Thanks."

"Yeah, no problem," he said, his eyes a bit wide as he slowly pulled back his arm. I couldn't help but smile: he'd startled himself with his own reflexes.

"But how do we get coach to stop?" I finished the question I'd meant to ask. "I can't just stitch Scott up here, I need my bag."

But just as Stiles was about to answer, Scott rose from his seat, drawing his attention. "Whoa, what are you doing?"

"It's Boyd," Scott said, breathing heavily, "he's gonna do something." I looked over at Boyd, who was putting his hand on the seat in front of him. Said hand having a pair of claws on it.

"Bh- how do you know?" Stiles asked.

"Maybe the inch-long claws sticking out of his hand are giving it away," I said, nodding at them. Stiles grimaced and nodded. "Scott, be careful," I warned him as he walked past me and towards Boyd.

"Aren't you going to do something?" Stiles frowned at me. I shook my head, but kept a close eye on Scott, who was slowly making his way over to Boyd.

"He'll listen to Scott." I squinted my eyes. "I think."

"You think?" Stiles hissed, but I just smiled and pointed at Boyd, who was now leaning back into his seat as Scott walked back to us. "Okay, but…" he waited for Scott to sit down next to him. "Ethan keeps checking his phone every five minutes, like he's waiting for something, a message, or a signal of some kind. Something evil though, I can tell." he turned to Scott, pointing his finger at him, "I have a very perceptive eye for evil. You know that."

I scoffed and rolled my eyes. "Yeah, sure, just like how you 'could tell' that Deaton was evil."

Stiles sighed and rolled his eyes, "bu-"

"And Derek!" I interrupted him, laughing as he folded his arms with a grumpy expression on his face. I looked over to Ethan, who was sitting next to Danny, and took out my phone. Time to send Danny a text. ' _Danny, Stiles and I've got a bet. Find out why Ethan keeps checking his phone. If I win, you get half the cash.'_ Even from the back of the bus, I could hear Danny's phone go off, and I could see Danny frown at the screen. Soon, I got a text back.

' _No, I really like this guy.'_

I rolled my eyes and texted back: ' _Don't tell me you're not curious too.'_ Danny hesitated, but soon I got a text.

' _Someone close to him is sick. They might not make it through the night.'_ I showed my phone to Stiles, who then showed it to Scott. When I got it back, I texted: ' _Thanks Danny. Stiles owes you five bucks.'_

"Stiles what?" I rolled my eyes as Stiles grabbed my phone from me. "Lora!" he hissed, but Scott interfered before we could start a discussion.

"Does that mean Ennis is still alive?" he asked. I shrugged. During the fight with the Alpha pack, Derek and Annis had fallen down, dropped down a floor or two. But there was no opportunity for a proper conversation about what could've happened. Choach decided it was the perfect time for a little speech. Or more like a rant.

"Don't you dare throw up Jared," he said - more like shouted - at a boy who looked very sick, "because if you throw up, I'll throw up. I'm an empathic vomiter. And then there'll be puke everywhere and it'll be profoundly disgusting."

"Please don't talk about throwing up, it's not good, it's not good," the boy, Jared, said as he shook his head. Not that Coach listened.

"I might throw up on you just to make a point, Jared."

"It's not good. Not good." Jared winced as he wrapped his arms around his abdomen.

"Now the rest of you," Coach spoke to the rest, "don't think that we're gonna miss this meet just because of this small traffic jam, or a minor tornado warning, Jared. We're gonna make this thing! Nothing is gonna stop us!" He glared at our direction. "Stillinski, put your hand down!"

"You know, there's a food exit, 'bout a mile up, we could stop a-"

"We're not gonna stop." Coach said, shaking his head.

"Okay, but if we-"

"Stillinski!" Coach blew his whistle. "Shut it! Seriously! It's a little bus! Stop asking me questions!"

Stiles leant back in his seat, sighing. "I hate him." He looked at Scott. "Did you call Deaton?"

Scott held his phone up. "Keep getting his voicemail." He leant with his head against the window and sighed. I shook my head, starting to think there might be more behind his condition that just the physical wound. With a sigh, I pushed myself up from my seat.

"What're you going to do?" Stiles asked.

"The impossible," I mumbled, "try to convince Coach to pull over." I walked over to the front, where he was standing. "Coach, I think it might be best if we pull over in a bit."

"Oh not you too, Hield!" he exclaimed.

"Coach, just five minutes, I-" I clenched my teeth as he just blew his whistle. "We've been sittin-" whistle. "People are sick-" whistle. "Wo-" whistle. "Co-" whistle. "I'll puke all over this fuc-" coach took a deep breath and blew his whislte for ten seconds straight. "Fine!" I yelled, turning around before he could send me away. With a groan, I sat back down in my own seat. "Stiles?"

"Yeah?" he asked.

"Plan B." I turned to face him. "Go make Jared puke."

Stiles smirked.

~o~

Stiles and I were supporting Scott as we walked towards the male restrooms when Lydia and Allison came running towards us.

"How's he doing?" Allison asked.

"Well, the blood is turning black, his skin is as pale as a sheet and he's barely aware of what's going on around him," I said, looking at Scott. "Isn't that right?"

He looked up, slightly dazed. "What?" I looked at Allison with an "I-told-you-so' expression as we walked into the restroom.

"Easy, easy." I said as Stiles and I lowered Scott so he could sit. Well, more like lean against the wall between the sinks. "Lydia, any thoughts?" I asked, turning to the girl to see her thinking.

"It might be psychological," she said, staring at Scott. "Somatoformic. Physical disease from a psychogenic cause." She sighed when Stiles squinted his eyes at her. "Yes, it's all in his head."

"Because of Derek," Stiles nodded. "He's not letting himself heal because Derek died."

"Dammit Scott." I sighed. "You just had to go and have good morals, didn't you." I looked at Lydia. "What can cure a somatoformic condition? We can't bring Derek back to life."

Lydia rummaged through my backpack, which she'd taken from the bus for me, and took out my first aid kit. "Stitch him up."

I nodded, understanding. "Make his mind believe it's healing?" Lydia nodded and smiled just a bit. Ever since we started working on our… connection thing, I'd become better at following her thought process. "Let's do this." I said, taking the kit and then turning to Allison. "I… could use a hand. If you want to." It wasn't easy for me to forgive her, but she had been trying and… apparantly she showed up last night during the fight. Possibly saved the lives of some people I now considered friends.

Allison nodded, silently thanking me before we started going to work.

~o~

I was busy preparing the bandages that would have to cover Scott's wound after the stitching whislt Allison started stitching Scott up. I had my back turned to her, but I could hear her muttering some words.

"Come on. Come on." pause. "I'm trying." pause. "My hands won't stop shaking." She took a deep breath, but soon afterwards grunted in frustration. I turned around to see her struggling to put the thread through the needle. Gently, I put my hand on her shoulder.

"It's okay," I said, slowly taking it from her, "it's okay. My hands shook like hell too when I had to stitch up my dad once." I kept talking in a hushed voice as I threaded the needle. "Clinically and unemotionally, am I right?" I handed the now threaded needle back to her. "Fucking hate those words."

Allison let out something between a laugh and a sob. "Thank you," she whispered before starting the stitching. I turned back to finish the last bits on the bandage.

"Come on Scott, stay with us." I said as I turned back around. Scott had his eyes closed, and I wasn't sure if he was breathing. Still, Allison was almost done with the stitching, she only had to cut the wire.

"Allison…" I said, leaning forward and putting my hand in his neck. "I'm… his pulse is weak." I looked around frantically, trying to find something to wake him up. I almost groaned as my eyes landed on the sink. I stood up, turned it on and cupped my hands, filling them with water which I then splashed into Scott's face, waking him up.

"Thank God." I muttered, quickly moving to put on the bandage whilst Scott and Allison had a hushed conversation. "All done." I said, patting my hand on it. "You'll be fine in no time." I looked at Allison and she nodded, giving Scott a new shirt to put on from his bag. Time to get back to the bus.

~o~

"Is he okay?" Lydia asked as she ran towards us. "Are you okay?" she asked Scott, who was walking between me and Allison, who were supporting him.

"Yeah, where's Stiles?" Scott asked.

"Trying to stall coach," Lydia said, taking Scott's bag from me. "We still don't have gas." she told Allison.

"I'm not leaving him." Allison shook her head.

"Then we have to leave the car," Lydia said.

Allison shrugged. "Sounds good."

I let out a laugh as Lydia immediately stopped walking. "What? That wasn't an actually suggestion!" she called after us, before muttering. "Screw it." and running to catch up.

When we got to the bus, there was a small crowd gathered around something. I could hear a few people shouting as Stiles ran towards us.

"I told him what'd happened to you and he just went after him." he told Scott, who frowned at him.

"Who? Boyd?"

Stiles shook his head. "Isaac."

My eyes widened and I let go of Scott to run towards the scene, pushing past a few people to see what was going on. Ethan was on the ground, back against a tree. He had blood running down his nose and mouth. Isaac was beating the shit out of him.

"Isaac! Isaac!" Coach yelled, running out of the bus. I stepped forward and pulled Isaac away from Ethan.

"Isaac, stop!" I said, but he kept struggling. He was about to break loose from my grip any second when…

"Isaac!" Scott yelled, something deeper to his voice that made Isaac freeze. I slowly let go of him and turned him around, forcing him to look at me.

"You okay?" I whispered, frowning at him whilst he just looked at me, slightly dazed and still panting. "Isaac, are you okay?" I shook him by the shoulders a little until he nodded, after which I let go.

"Lahey, get your ass over here!" Coach yelled. Isaac winced before walking away. I quickly ran back to Stiles and Lydia.

"Something's wrong," I said, panting, "Even if he's pissed, Isaac wouldn't just fly at Ethan like that." We just looked at each other in worry, none quite sure what to do. What could we even do?

"Alright everyone, back in the bus!" Coach yelled.

~o~

"So let's go over this one more time," Stiles said. We were once again sitting at the back of the bus, only this time Lydia was sitting next to the window instead of Scott, who was sitting in front of us with Allison. "Everything has to do with someone who thinks he's, like, a dark druid of some sorts."

"Or actually is a dark druid," Lydia said.

"Or is a female," I added, our two comments making Stiles roll his eyes.

"Yeah, alright. A Darach."

Lydia looked down in thought. "You know, in some ancient cultures they made sacrifices before battle."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "Alpha pack versus Darach?"

Lydia shrugged. "Could be."

"About sums it up." Stiles added. I sighed and rested my head against his shoulder, tired. Something told me this cross country trip would not go as planned. Not that Scott almost dying had been in the plan in the first place. A knot formed in my stomach as the feeling rose that something much worse was coming.

 **A/N: I'm thinking of splitting all chapters in two from now on. Writing 4k chapters isn't really working out for me and I can see that my quality is suffering under it. (Not that there's much there to suffer, but oh well)**

 **Hope you enjoyed this chapter nonetheless, and I'll see you in the next one!**

 **~Lilly**


	12. Chapter eleven

**Chapter eleven: Motel California**

I was woken up by Stiles, who was shaking me by the shoulders.

"Lora, come on, wake up," he said, letting go when I opened my eyes. "We have to spend the night here, traffic's too bad." I nodded and let him help me get out of my seat. We exited the bus, joining Lydia, Scott, and Allison outside.

"I've seen worse," Scott said. I frowned and looked up, seeing we were at a motel. Oh joy. The Glen Capri. Name sounded as shitty as the motel probably was.

Stiles frowned at Scott. "Dude, where have you seen worse?"

I shrugged. "I've definitely seen worse." Moving across the country with Dad, you're bound to end up in a shitty motel sooner or later.

"Alright everyone, the meet's been pushed till tomorrow," Coach announced. "This is the closest motel, with the most vacancies, and the least amount of judgement when it comes to accepting a bunch of… degenerates like yourself." He held up a bunch of room keys. "You'll be pairing up, choose wisely."

"Twins or queens?" I yelled, my voice still groggy from sleeping.

"Twins, I will not have any sexual perversions tonight, alright?" he yelled at everyone whilst people started walking past him, taking a key along the way. "Keep your dirty little hands, to your dirty little selves!"

"Yeah, thanks Coach," I muttered. I looked up at Stiles, who was looking from me to Scott. I then rolled my eyes. "Fine, I'll go have my own room." I figured that Allison and Lydia would be pairing up, as would Isaac and Boyd. Which left me. Alone. Joy.

"I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" Stiles asked. I could tell he felt guilty about not sharing a room with me, but it'd rather have that he shared one with Scott, just in case anything happened with his wound again.

"Sure." I stood on my toes and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Off you go." I smiled softly as he and Scott walked off, leaving just me, Lydia, and Allison standing at the bus. And coach.

"All right, one of you will get their own room, don't include me in the fight." he said, tossing Allison two sets of keys before walking away. Allison looked at me before tossing me one set.

"Lydia, you coming?" she asked as she looked back. When I turned around, I saw Lydia staring at the motel with concern.

"I don't like this place," she whispered.

Allison chuckled. "I don't even think that the owners of this place, like this place. Besides, it's just for one night."

"A lot can happen in one night," Lydia whispered. I walked over to her and put an arm around her.

"Call me if you need me, alright?" I whispered, waiting for her to nod until I let go. Soon, she and Allison were gone too, leaving just me. I looked up at the motel one last time, shaking my head as a shiver went down my spine. Just one night, Lorraine.

~o~

The room wasn't so bad, I'd definitely had worse. Since I was still tired as fuck, I immediately went to bed. Not that it lasted long. After about an hour I woke up again, with a sore throat. With a groan, I got up out of bed and walked to the bathroom, opening up the tap.

"Gross." I muttered when I saw small flecks of a rusty brown colour in the water. Pipes must be old. I walked out of the bathroom and towards the door, trying to open it. Trying and failing.

"What the-" I tried again, pushing and pulling on the door, but it wouldn't budge. My heart beated heavily in my chest as I kept trying. I went back to my bed and took the key off the nightstand, but even with that I couldn't get the door to open. Stiles. Call Stiles. I took my phone out of my pocket, but there was no signal. Of course. Lydia. Lydia would hear me.

" _Lydia?"_ I called out, growing more frantic by the second. " _Lydia!"_

" _What's wrong?"_

" _My door's locked, it won't open."_ I dug my nails into the palm of my hand, trying to get myself to calm down. For a while, Lydia didn't answer. " _Lydia? Are you still there?"_ Still, no answer. I kicked against the door in frustration, which didn't do any good.

"Come on!" I banged against the door, but it wouldn't budge. Then, it was like a small shaft in the door opened, showing me a face I knew all too well.

"Behave, Lorraine. It's for your own good," Cassandra said, "Don't pretend that you didn't want to kill them." I shook my head. Just a nightmare, Lorraine. It had to be. "Look at me when I'm talking!" My eyes instantly shot back up. "You killed them. Not me, you. You killed those people, just like you killed your mother and your father and just like you'll kill-"

"Shut up!" I screamed, though the words came out strangled. "Shut up, shut up, shut up," Letting out a sob, I let myself slide down against the door, pressing my palms against my ears and digging my nails into my skin, trying to block out the sound.

~o~

"Lora!"

Lydia's scream was so ear piercing, I was certain I'd need hearing aids from the second I woke up. Confusing thing was, I wasn't in my bed.

"What…" I whispered, looking around to find myself sitting on the floor, head in my hands. I let go my head and pulled my hands back, seeing my nails covered in blood. I took a shaky breath

"Lora, what happened?" Lydia asked. I looked up and saw her sitting on her knees, in front of me.

"The door, it was locked." I frowned and stood up, nearly falling over but someone caught and steadied me. When I walked to the door and tried it, it opened with no trouble.

"The door wasn't locked." I turned around to see that Stiles and Allison were also in the room, Allison being the one who'd just spoken. "Maybe you had a nightmare. Sleepwalked?"

I shook my head. "I don't sleepwalk. Haven't had a nightmare in weeks."

Stiles looked down. "Yeah, you have. Just don't remember them." A feeling of guilt washed over me as I realised I must've woken him up several times due to my nightmares.

"Can we get out of here now?" Lydia asked. "This place is freaking the hell out of me."

Allison nodded in agreement. "The last time I saw Scott act like that was during a full moon."

"Yeah, he was definitely a little off with me too," Stiles said, walking over to me and taking off his vest. When he handed it to me, I frowned. "You're shaking," he whispered, helping me put it on. "But actually, it was Boyd who was really off," he said, now once again talking to all of us, "I watched him put his first through a vending machine."

"See? It is the motel!" Lydia looked around the room, "Either we need to get out of here, right now, or…" she opened the drawer of my nightstand and took out a bible. "Someone needs to learn how to do an exorcism asap, before the werewolves go crazy and kill us!"

"Okay, okay, first of all:" Stiles started, trying to calm her down, "Lora already knows how to perform an exorcism. "Second of all: What if it's not just the motel?" he turned to Allison, "the number in the office went up by four, right?

"What number?" I asked.

"They keep track of the amount of suicides." Stiles patted me on the back and I gave him a fake smile. Joy.

"So, you mean like three sacrifices, plus one?" Allison frowned at him.

"What if this time, it's three werewolves, and…" Stiles fell silent.

I frowned. "What, me?"

Lydia shook her head. "Lora might not be a sacrifice. If the Darach knows what she is, they might try to kill her. Next to Deaton, she knows the most out of all of us."

"Can we stop talking about me like I'm going to die?" I exclaimed, wincing as a sharp pain shot through my head. I held my hand up to where it hurt, feeling a warm liquid coming from my head. "I need to heal." I muttered, taking off Stiles' vest.

"Wait!" Lydia exclaimed, running a few steps towards me, holding up her arm. "What if… you're almost completely human like this, right?" I nodded. "What if you go full Raven and whatever is affecting you takes over?"

"So I'm supposed to bleed to death?" I snapped. They all stared at me with wide eyes and I shook my head. "Sorry, I…"

Stiles stepped forward and grabbed hold of my hand. "Just wait until we know what's going on, okay?" I nodded. His reassurance had calmed me down a bit, but I hadn't missed the slight tremble in his voice. He was terrified. I smiled softly at him and gave his hand a squeeze.

"What's that noise?" Lydia asked out of nowhere. My head shot up and towards her immediately. If she heard something, then that something was likely to be very wrong.

"Where's it coming from?"

Lydia looked to the wall with wide eyes. "We just checked that room, it's empty." I didn't bother to ask why they checked, I bolted to the door and ran around the corner, towards the door of the room next to mine. When I tried to open that one, it was locked.

"It wasn't locked before," Lydia, who was standing behind me, whispered in terror. It was then that I heard the noise Lydia had heard before. A saw. Had to be.

"Let me try." I turned around to look at Stiles, who was preparing himself to run into the door.

"You'll break your arm," I objected, "I'll kick it do-" there was a crash behind me, Allison had kicked down the door. None of us waisted any further time, instead we ran in. The room was under construction, with a few bright lamps that shone onto some white cloths and metal constructions.

Ethan was standing in the middle of the room, holding a saw with spinning blades just above his stomach. I ran towards him with Stiles, trying to pull it out of his hands. Of course, the two of us couldn't win from an Alpha.

"Lyds, the plug!" I yelled, "pull the plug!"

Stiles and I managed to pull the saw from Ethan's hands, though the recoil sent Stiles flying after it. He caught himself with his hands, which was certainly a good thing, as his nose was only an inch above the saw, which slowly stopped spinning. With a sigh of relief, I turned back around. Only Ethan was now attempting to kill himself by using his own claws, embedding them in his abdomen.

"Fucking hell!" I ran after him and grabbed his arms, but he just pushed me to the side, sending me falling to the floor.

"Lora?" Stiles called as he too ran for Ethan.

"Fine!" I groaned as I pushed myself off the floor. By the time I got up, Allison and Stiles had managed push Ethan forward, his reflexes kicking in as he caught himself with his arm on a lamp to keep himself from falling. Only the lamp was hot from being on this long, causing Ethan to hiss in pain.

He looked up, slightly dazed. "What just happened?"

"We were about to ask you the same thing," Allison said, but Ethan was already running out of the room.

"No, Ethan!" Stiles ran after him and the rest of us soon followed him outside and down the metal stairs.

"Didn't you hear what I just said?" Ethan was closing his shirt as he kept walking. "I have no idea how I got there or what I was doing."

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you could be a little more helpful, you know, we just saved your life!"

Ethan turned around. "Well, you probably shouldn't have." And walked away for good. We let out a collective sigh and Lydia held her hands up in the air.

"What now?" she asked.

"I'll go find Scott," Allison started walking back up the stairs, "you go get Isaac and Boyd. Best thing we can do is get them out of this place."

"Hold on!" I yelled, turning to Lydia, "You go with her. We can communicate, no one should be left alone." Lydia nodded before following Allison, who didn't protest. I then turned, to Stiles, who was eyeing me oddly.

"What?"

"Are you alright?"

I shrugged. "Yeah, fine. Let's go." I walked over to where I knew Isaac and Boyd were sleeping, but Stiles caught up and grabbed me by the arm, stopping me.

"I mean…" he sighed, "you almost clawed through your skull, something serious just happened to you and you… just act like it's nothing…" I clenched my jaw shut.

"I was taught how to handle situations like these, Stiles," I explained, "clinically and unemotionally. Now let's go."

~o~

We almost reached the room when I heard Lydia call out in my mind. I wasn't sure if she was intentionally telling me, but it didn't matter.

We'd been walking in silence (which is a miracle by itself when you're with Stiles), but then I spoke up. "Someone's drowning!"

He didn't question it, neither of us did, and we started sprinting, even when we entered the room and headed straight for the bathroom. Inside the bathtub was Boyd, lying there with his head underwater and a safe on his chest. Stiles reached into the tub, trying to pull the plug out of the drain, but he shook his head.

"He's blocked it, he used something to block the drain, I can't get to it." I crouched down and started pulling at the safe with him, but we could only lift it an inch or two before it got too heavy.

Stiles sighed and walked back, he hissed in pain as his arm hit the heater on the wall.

"You alright?" I asked, and he nodded before freezing.

"Wait a sec. The heater, Ethan came out of it when he touched the heater!"

A spark of hope lit up in my stomach, before distinguishing itself immediately. "He's underwater."

"Yeah, I'm aware of that!" We stood there, silent in thought, until his head snapped up. "Ask Lydia."

"Fire underwat- fine!" I closed my eyes. " _Lydia? We need something that can burn underwater, or give off heat."_

" _Eh, bh… well there's emergency flares on the bus, they have their own oxidisers, they can burn under water."_

I almost cheered at that. " _Thank you!"_ I opened my eyes and turned to Stiles. "There's these emergency flares on the bus, those'll do it. I'll go get them." As I walked past him, Stiles grabbed my arm and stopped me.

"I'll go, you're still hurt." before I could even protest, he bolted out of the room.

" _Oh and Lora?"_ Lydia called out, " _The cap's a match!"_

" _Thanks Lyds."_ I sighed once she was gone. My head shot up as the sound of someone sniffing reached my ears. It was very quiet, no wonder I hadn't noticed before. I turned around and scanned the room, but there wasn't anyone there. Unless… I moved over to the bed and crouched down, looking underneath it. A terrified Isaac looked back at me before pushing himself away. I jumped up out of reflex, and nearly jumped again when Stiles put his hand on my shoulder, having returned with the flares.

"What do I do?" He held up two red sticks with plastic caps.

"Th- eh-" I shook my head, "the cap's a match!" Stiles nodded and he took off the cap of one, striking it against the end of the flare. After a few tries, a bright red light shot out of it. Stiles didn't waste any time and ran straight for the tub, pushing the flare inside. He staggered back as I ran into the room.

"Carefu-" he couldn't finish his sentence, but Stiles managed to pull me towards him just before Boyd threw the safe off of him, it landing where I'd been standing seconds ago. I took a deep breath before relaxing, leaning my head against Stiles' chest. Just when he wrapped his arms around me, I remembered Isaac and stepped forward, picking up the flare.

"He's under the-" I rolled my eyes as the flare burnt out. Typical. "You've got the other one?" Stiles nodded and handed it to me. I took off the cap and ignited it, slowly walking to the bed.

"Isaac?" I crouched down and looked underneath the bed. Isaac was still there. "Don't hate me for this." I stuck the flare underneath the bed.

~o~

We'd gathered back up with Allison and Lydia, who hadn't been able to find Scott. Boyd and isaac stayed in their room, recovering.

"I just don't know where he could be," Allison shook her head as we walked down the stairs. I frowned as two sounds came to my attention: a soft fizzing and the dripping of water. I looked around, and my entire body froze as my eyes settled on Scott. He was standing in the open area of the motel, ten feet in front of the bus. He was soaked with a transparent liquid, but I could guess all too well what that would be, as a red gasoline tank lied by his feet. In his hand he held one of the emergency flares.

Allison was the first to move. "Scott." She walked towards him, but around the small layer of gasoline that had formed itself on the concrete. Stiles put his hand behind him, reaching for mine. I gently took it, and together with Lydia we walked over to where Allison was standing, between the bus and Scott. "Scott." Allison repeated. Slowly, he looked up, his expression tired and desperate, through and through.

"There's no hope," he said, his voice strained.

Allison shook her head. "What do you mean Scott?" she tried to smile, "there's always hope."

"Not for me. Not for Derek." Scott stared out in front of him, solemnly.

"Derek wasn't your fault," Allison sniffed, "you know Derek wasn't your fault."

But Scott wasn't listening. "Every time I try to fight back it only gets worse. People keep getting hurt," he paused, "People keep getting killed."

"But lots more would've got killed," I tried to reason with him, "you've saved so many lives."

Scott looked right at me. "Then why couldn't I save the others?"

Stiles stepped forward, and I with him. "Scott, listen, okay? This isn't you, alright? This is someone inside your head, telling you to do this. Okay? Now j-"

"What if it is just me?" Scott started shaking a bit, "What if doing this is actually the best thing I could do for everyone else?" He looked at Stiles. "Remember what it was like, before all this? We were… we were nothing. We weren't popular. We weren't good at lacrosse. We weren't important."

"Everybody's important," Lydia whispered as I squeezed Stiles hand, doing the only thing I could think of to comfort him.

" _Any Banshee feelings?"_ I glanced at Lydia, but she shook her head.

"We were no one," Scott continued, "maybe I should go back to being no one again." He held up the flare, "No one at all."

Stiles took a shaky breath, stepping forward. "Scott, just listen to me, okay?" he sniffed, "you're not no one. Okay? You're someone, you're…" he took another step, and I followed him, "Scott, you're my best friend. Okay? And I need you." He stopped in front of the gasoline. "You're my brother. Alright, so…" he looked down at his feet, his toes barely not touching the liquid on the concrete. Slowly, he let go of my hand as he stepped forward. My body froze and my heart ached inside my chest.

"So if you're gonna do this," he slowly reached for the flare, "then I think you're just going to have to take me with you then." He had his hand on the flare now, and I felt like screaming. Stiles placed one hand over Scott's and pushed it down, finally taking the flare from him. He quickly threw it away. I watched as it fell down, just next to the gasoline. I walked over to grab it, make sure it didn't roll into the puddle next to it, when a sudden blow of the wind rolled it towards it.

My head shot towards Stiles, who was still standing on the gasoline with Scott. Without even doing so much as thinking about it, I sprinted towards them and tackled Stiles, pulling him along with me through the air until we hit the dry concrete. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw that Lydia had done the same for Scott.

Then, the flare reached the gasoline, and a huge flame shot up into the air. The others looked away, blinded by the light, but Lydia and I couldn't stop looking at it. Something was very, very wrong. At the flame's highest point, a figure appeared in it. A cloaked person, but their face… it was decayed, grey. That wasn't the worst. It was slashed open, its eyes surrounded by dark circles and the teeth exposed. Whoever it was, they should be dead. They should've been dead a long time ago. And the sight of it made me as sick to my stomach as it hurt. It went against everything a Raven fought for, life and death. But as soon as it'd appeared, it had disappeared, leaving us there, in the dark.

I scrambled off of Stiles, not having noticed I'd been lying on top of him, before helping him up. As soon as he was up, I pulled him into a hug.

"Please don't ever do that again," I whispered, fighting back my tears. I knew I had no right to ask that of him, and he never said he wouldn't do it again. Instead, he wrapped his arms around me and let out a sob, everything that had happened that night crashing down on him. "Everyone's safe," I whispered, "We made it. Everyone's safe."

~o~

I woke up to someone nudging me in my shoulder. I let out a groan as I opened my eyes, the light filling the bus way too bright. After the whole… thing, we sure as fucking hell weren't going back into the motel, so we'd slept inside the bus.

"Lora, wake up," Stiles said. I rubbed my eyes and looked around, seeing that not only Stiles, but also Lydia, Scott, Allison and Isaac were looking at me.

"What?"

"Do you know what this is?" Lydia asked. In her hand she held out grey dust with flecks of purple.

"Wolfsbane," I said with a frown, I'd taught them that months ago.

"We know that," Lydia sighed, rummaging through her bag until she found a pair of tweezers. With it, she took out one of the purple flecks inside the wolfsbane. "We mean this." She held it out to me, but it was so small that I couldn't see it with the tweezers. So I held out my hand and she put it inside. As soon as it touched my skin, my hand started burning. I hissed out in pain and shook it off.

"What the fuck?" I looked at my hand to see the tiniest scorch mark. "That's impossible."

"The Darach put it in coach's whistle," Stiles explained, "every time he blew it, wolfsbane and… this flew through the bus. We all inhaled it. But if the wolfsbane was for the werewolves..." He swallowed.

I nodded. Whatever the purple stuff was, it had been for me. "If they know what I am, and how to fight me with things not even the Ravens know about…" I shook my head. "This Darach could kill me."

 **A/N: I didn't want Lora to be too overpowered, as she already has some serious advantages. So I made it so that when human, she's almost completely human, and when a Raven, she still has weaknesses. I hope I did this alright, if not so, tips are much appreciated ;)**

 **Thank you all so much for reading, and I'll see you in the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	13. Chapter twelve

**Chapter twelve: Betony**

"Derek's not dead?" I looked from Stiles to Scott, who'd told me the news. "How?"

"Ethan says they're pretty sure he's still alive. But Ennis is dead. Either he joins the pack or they kill him." I slumped back into my seat. Not as good as I'd hoped. "What do we do?"

I shrugged. "Help, if we can. I honest-" I coughed, wincing at the burning feeling in my throat. Worse than that, I couldn't seem to stop coughing. Eventually, Stiles handed me some water, which I gulped down. When I handed him back his bottle, it was covered with dark purple spots, where my hand had been. I looked down at it, and it was covered in the same spots. "Scott?" I looked up at him. "Call Deaton."

Soon, Isaac, Lydia, and Allison joined Stiles and Scott around me. Much to my annoyance. Scott, Stiles, and I were sitting on the seats in the back of the bus, with Lydia and Allison in front of us and Isaac crouched down in front of Scott, looking at me. Scratch that, they were all looking at me.

"Any word from Deaton?" Allison asked, eyeing Scott, who shook his head.

"He's not picking up."

"Don't you have any idea what it could be?" Lydia asked me.

I shrugged. "Could be several things. Poison, maybe. There's quite a few druid plants that are poisonous, but…" I sighed, leaning my head against my seat and closing my eyes. "I don't know, alright?" I couldn't help but smile softly as I felt Stiles put his hand on mine.

"He's calling!" I opened my eyes at Scott's announcement and held out a hand. He nodded and handed me the phone, having put it on speaker.

" _Scott?"_ Deaton said from the other side of the line, " _Something wrong?"_

"Hey Deaton," I coughed once more, wincing, "you don't happen to know any plants that could… you know, kill me? Purple, kind of burning my lungs right now."

" _I… will need to get a sample to be sure. It could be the flower of a betony. The druids used to burn it at summer solstice to protect themselves from evil, or use it as an amulet to keep them safe."_

"Yeah, that's great, but what do I-" I rolled my eyes as Stiles gave me a look, "do... we do?"

" _Well, the principle for an antidote for the druids was to find the plant that delivered the opposite effect."_

"If Betony wards off evil, what's used to attract it?"

" _It is said that Blackthorn is a bearer of death and illness. It should counteract the Betony. I have some over here but…"_ he sighed, " _you'll have to hurry. Take it slow, and don't run. The more you breath, the more it spreads into your bloodstream."_

I opened my mouth to say something, but Stiles quickly slapped his hand in front of it. "Thanks Deaton," he said before hanging up. I glared at him and opened my mouth once again, but… "Ah-ah-ah!" he pressed his finger against my lips. "No talking, okay?" I sighed and leaned back into my seat. Stiles turned to Lydia. "How much longer until we get back to Beacon Hills?"

"Four hours?" she guessed.

"Okay, okay," Stiles sighed and reached for my hand, squeezing it. "You'll make it."

"Well, how do you know?" Isaac asked, gaining a few glares. "I'm just saying, maybe we should be doing something instead of sitting here and worrying about it."

"She needs to get back to Beacon Hills as fast as possible," Lydia agreed with a nod.

Allison looked around the group for a moment before stopping to look at Scott "So? What do we do?"

Scott's eyes widened. "Why are you looking at me?"

Stiles frowned as his phone went off, getting a text message. He took it out of his pocket, looked at me for a moment and rolled his eyes before reading the text I'd sent out loud. "You're the Alpha."

Scott's eyes shot towards me, they were wide for half a second before he acted normal again. Which begged the question: why was me joking he was the Alpha so shocking to him? Unless… "W- I don't know what to do!" Scott's words pulled me out of my thoughts. I rolled my eyes and started typing on my phone again.

"What can we do to speed up the bus?" Stiles read.

"Buses can go up to around 70 miles per hour," Lydia remarked, "if we could convince the driver to go faster…"

"How?" Allison shook her head. "We're already pushing the speed limit."

"Then we wait," I said, ignoring Stiles trying to shush me. "Someone call their parent, they'll have to be at the school when we arrive and bring me to Deaton immediately. Meanwhile…" I looked at Lydia, "Sleeping slows your heart rate, right?" She nodded. "Okay, then…" I let my nails come out, the burning in my lungs intensifying as I did. "I'll knock myself out." I eyed everyone, waited for them to nod before taking a deep breath. I winced as once again, the burning got worse. Then, I pressed my nails into my palms, my sight slowly blurring.

~o~

When I woke up, we were still on the bus. My head was resting against Stiles' shoulder in an angle that must've been pretty unnatural going by the pain in my neck that accompanied it.

"How much farther?" I said, though it came out weak. My throat was sore and it felt like it was on fire. My hand also hurt, but that must've been because Stiles was holding it tightly.

Stiles tensed up before letting go of my

"Thank God!" Lydia exclaimed, quickly turning around on her seat to look at me. "We were getting worried."

I frowned. "Why?"

"Your heart rate… it's slow." she swallowed. "Very slow. For a while, we weren't sure if you'd wake up." She looked down at her hands, there was a tremble in her voice and tears in her eyes. I took my head off of Stiles' shoulder and looked at him. His eyes were watery and the hand that wasn't clenching mine was trembling.

"Sorry," I said, "Didn't meant to scare you like that."

"Yeah," Stiles quickly wiped his nose with his hand, "anyway we got coach to agree to let you out of the bus first, said you've probably got food poisoning. Allison's dad is waiting for us at the school."

"Okay," I nodded, wincing a bit. It was… odd. For the most part, I just felt… numb. Tired. Very out of breath.

"Bh- wh- okay?" Stiles frowned at me and then looked at Lydia, who shrugged, though she looked fairly worried as well.

"She's probably going delusional. Either that or her mind is shutting itself down so she doesn't freak out," she turned to me with a fake smile on her face, "Isn't that right, Lora?"

I just nodded and put my head against Stiles' shoulder again, closing my eyes. "Yeah, yeah."

"Don't let her fall asleep!" Lydia hissed. Someone started patting their hand on my cheek, forcing me to stay awake.

"C'mon Lora, almost there, any second now," even though I had my eyes open, Stiles kept patting my cheek. Then, the bus stopped. I was about to ask Stiles if we'd arrived when Coach's voice boomed through the bus.

"Alright, stay in your seats! Stillinski, Argent!" he looked towards us, "get outta here!" Allison stood up from her seat and turned around, ready to help Stiles get me out of my seat.

"Can she stand?" she asked Stiles.

He swung my arm over his shoulder and pulled me up with him. "I'm not sure and don't really want to find out." Allison nodded at that as she swung my other arm over her shoulder. Then the two of them started helping me get out of the bus, earning a few concerned whispers along the way. Once we were out of the bus, I felt myself being lifted up and carried towards a car.

"Well this is slightly embarrassing," I muttered as I looked up at Chris Argent, "thanks though."

Stiles ran towards the car and opened the door to the backseat. "We really need to hurry now," he said as Chris put me inside of the car.

"Why now more than four seconds ago?" Allison asked as she got into the car, shotgun.

Stiles sat down next to me and squinted his eyes at her. "She just thanked your father. For not letting her do something herself."

Allison nodded. "Good point."

~o~

We'd rushed into the animal clinic, where Deaton was waiting for us. After examining the purple dust that Lydia had kept and handed to Allison, Deaton concluded that it was indeed Betony. He then proceeded to hand me an… inhaler.

"It's filled with pulverised Blackthorn," he explained as he handed it to me, "Use it once every hour for the next six hours, then once every four hours until you feel better."

I nodded and quickly used the inhaler before looking up at him from the workbench I was sitting on. "Thanks Deaton,"

He smiled. "No problem. Now, don't do anything that makes you out of breath," he pointed a finger at me, "Your lungs are still damaged. And under no account shift until you're fully healed." he lowered his hand, "understood?" I nodded and got off the workbench, pocketing my inhaler.

"How long until she's healed?" Stiles asked Deaton, who shrugged.

"Could be a few days. Could be weeks. There isn't much information on Ravens, even under us emissaries. Whoever this Darch is… they're powerful."

Stiles frowned, his mind got stuck at the word 'emissaries'. "I thought you were a druid?" He looked at me for an explanation.

I sighed and scratched my neck. "Honestly, when I was explaining it to you I thought it wouldn't be important. Emissaries are basically modern druids, they maintain peace and balance." Stiles nodded, and I just knew that he was probably going to write it down or something. I'd noticed him doing that, kind of making his own bestiary or encyclopedia of the supernatural. Just what we came across, no extra's.

"Well, let's get you two home," Chris said as he stepped into the room. He and Allison had waited outside the door, though Stiles had insisted on coming in with me. I gave him a nod and thanked Deaton once more before leaving.

~o~

Stiles and I were lying on his… our bed. He'd just finished explaining our chemistry homework (even when he was 'missing' Harries and his planner were still haunting me) and I actually got it! I fucking understood chemistry. I looked up from my textbook to Stiles, smiling at him.

He smiled back. "Yeah?"

I nodded and leant forward, kissing him. One thing led to another, and we only really came out of it when the textbook fell on the floor. I let out a laugh at how Stiles seemed to almost fly off the bed, probably thinking that his dad had come home.

"He's on night shift!" I managed to say through my laughter. "But you can put a tie on the doorknob if it makes you feel better. Stiles' eyes widened and he suddenly ran towards his backpack which was lying on the floor. "What?"

"Just something I… got you," he took out something flat and plastic and showed it to me, with an almost teasing smile on his face. I squinted my eyes at the object before laughing. It was one of those door hangers, a red one that said "occupied".

"For the bathroom?"

"If you want," he shrugged.

I laughed once more and pushed myself off the bed, walking over to him and taking the hanger. "You're too sweet," I then smirked, "so you don't want any more…"

"No!" Stiles said somewhat too quickly. I chuckled as he grew red, but I just gave him another quick kiss before pulling back.

"Just teasing you. Although..." Stiles' eyes widened for a split second, but soon he was the one to surprise me as he leant in and sent the both of us staggering back towards the bed.

 **A/N: I know I've been saying this a lot lately, but sorry. I missed last week's upload and this chapter is just... really short. I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. I tried my best to write an original chapter, but it's of course more difficult as I don't really have a guideline. If you did enjoy it, feel free to let me know :)**

 **December is a very busy month, so I'll be uploading chapters of around 2k words instead of 4k, at least for the next month or so. Hope you don't mind... :)**

 **As always, thanks for reading, and until the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	14. Chapter thirteen

**Chapter thirteen: Currents**

Remember where we left off last time? No? I'll give you a quick recap.

 _I chuckled as he grew red, but I just gave him another quick kiss before pulling back._

" _Just teasing you. Although..." Stiles' eyes widened for a split second, but soon he was the one to surprise me as he leant in and sent the both of us staggering back towards the bed._

Well, here's how that ended. As soon as we fell down onto the bed, all the air got squished out of my lungs, ending with me almost coughing myself to death and Stiles growing all worried all over again. Didn't want to ruin the flow then, but I figured I'd just tell you now.

Anyways, used my inhaler once again, went to sleep, everything was fine.

Until Scott called us in the middle of the night. There'd been a huge car pileup and two doctors who were supposed to be at the hospital had gone missing. On top of that, Ethan and Danny had come into the hospital, the latter was somehow choking. He had a collapsed lung and Melissa only just managed to save his life. After which he threw up… mistletoe.

Now Stiles and I were sure that the Darach had some role in all of this, and of course, Stiles had insisted that I stayed home, but who are we kidding here? I just rolled my eyes at him and got dressed.

~o~

Stiles and I arrived at the hospital the same time the sheriff did. Soon the three of us found Melissa and Scott, who'd found the empty car of one of the missing.

"Two missing-"

"Hang on there," the sheriff cut off Scott, "both of them were in the car?"

Stiles rolled his eyes a little. "No, dad, lo- what they're trying to tell you is that there were two separate kidnappings, okay? Two doctors, both gone."

The sheriff nodded. "So whose car is this?"

"Doctor Hilyard," Melissa answered, "the on-call doctor. The ER attending is the one who never made it in."

"Let me just focused on getting your story first, okay?" The sheriff waited for Melissa to nod before turning to us. "Kids, give us a second." We nodded and walked away from the two of them. I let out a sigh as I wrapped my arms around me. How everyone else wasn't freezing their tits off was beyond me.

"So, these are definitely sacrifices, right?" Scott said with a small sigh.

Stiles nodded. "Yeah, one Deaton mentioned; healers." Scott frowned a bit at that.

"But Danny, he threw up mistletoe. If he hadn't been with Ethan, he would've died. And Danny's not a healer," he looked at me, "that's not a coincidence right?" I just shook my head, my attention being drawn by the sheriff listening to something on his radio.

Stiles had noticed it too. "Can you hear that?" He asked Scott as he pointed at his dad. Scott turned around for a second, only to turn back again to us, his eyes wide.

"They found a body."

I frowned. "Whose?" There were still so many left to be found. Scott closed his eyes, focusing on the sound.

"The ER attending,"

I nodded. "Still, that's only two. You keep an eye out for you mother tonight, just to be on the safe side. And call Deaton."

Scott frowned. "Why? He's an veterinarian."

"That's a healer too, right?" I said with a shrug, "besides. The Darach apparently wants me dead, and Deaton saved me. I know what I'd do." The fact that Deaton could now be in danger because of me didn't feel right at all

~o~

I was walking through the hallway at school, already late for chemistry, when Isaac walked up to me with Boyd and stopped me.

"The Alpha pack is coming to Derek's house. Tonight," Isaac said before nodding at Boyd, "we're going to protect him."

My eyes widened a bit. "What, why…" I shook my head, "Do you have a plan?"

"We fill up Derek's floor with water, then charge it with electricity," Boyd said, holding up a duffle bag. "Should work, right?"

I nodded. "Make sure they don't or can't cut the power, otherwise you're fucked," I looked at Isaac, "Do you need me to come with you?"

He shook his head. "No, no, we can handle it…" he swallowed, "I hope. But you can't come."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Says who?"

"Says me. And Derek, and Stiles. You can't shift, and you can't get out of breath." I clenched my jaw shut, but nodded. Isaac let out a sigh of relief. "Okay, let's go." He and Boyd headed off. I bit my lip as I watched them go. I really wanted to be there, but at the moment I was useless. They could call me if they needed help. I sighed, trying my best to let it go, and walked around the corner, entering my classroom.

"Miss Hield, you're-"

"Late." I cut in, "yes, I was aware of that when I was puking down the toilet." Not even bothering to look at my English teacher, I walked over to my seat next to Lydia and sat down.

"Why is she here?" I whispered to Lydia. Miss Blake was that new English teacher, not chemistry.

"Substitute,"

"Joy."

Behind us, Scott's phone went off. After about thirty seconds of not-so-hushed whispering, he and Stiles patted me and Lydia on our shoulders. With a roll of our eyes, we turned around.

"Deaton's going to be taken," Scott whispered.

~o~

By the time the four of us arrived at the animal clinic, the sheriff and his deputies were already there. Scott ran out ahead of us, and when we entered the clinic he was sitting on one of the chairs in the waiting room, his look dazed.

"How about we talk a little bit in the other room?" the sheriff said to Scott, but nodded at us too as we came in. We walked into the operation room and closed the door shut.

"He's the third sacrifice for… healers, right?" the sheriff asked, sighing when we nodded. "Alright, alright. So how do we find him before… you know."

"If we knew that, we'd have stopped the killings weeks ago," I said with a sigh, rubbing my eyes. The sheriff nodded at that. "Maybe if we get a map of the town. The sacrifices never show up where they've been taken, and if this is truly done by a ritual… there should be a pattern. I hope."

"Hold on…" Lydia said, her eyes widening before she slapped herself on her forehead. "Of course! Danny got attacked, but he wasn't a sacrifice. Neither was Lora. Now why would the Darach want them dead? Why did it go for Deaton, out of all the other healers in Beacon Hills?"

"Because they're a threat," Stiles realised. "We need to talk to Danny!" He almost ran for the door when he froze, the door swinging open as miss Morrell stepped in.

"Listen," she started, but I just rolled my eyes.

"We know, we know. We need to talk to Danny, you want us to use Lydia's powers but we don't have to do that because it has no point as she isn't strong enough yet to locate someone." Morrell just looked at me with slightly wide eyes. "Just because I do bad at school doesn't mean I'm stupid, alright?" And with that, I took Stiles' hand and marched out of the room, Lydia probably rolling her eyes before following us.

~o~

Danny was still in the hospital, but luckily we managed to get into his room. The 'luck' in our situation being Melissa, who let us in. Danny boy was still asleep, but his schoolbag was next to the hospital bed, so I walked over and started rummaging through it.

"What are you doing?" Lydia hissed.

"Looking for something… anything," I took out a few textbooks, skimming through them but finding nothing. I looked up at Lydia. "Is Danny awake?"

She shook her head, and then looked at Stiles with wide eyes as the boy patted Danny on the cheek. "Stiles! Don't!" But it was too late, Danny's eyes fluttered open, though going by the look on his face, he was still half asleep, so I just kept going through his bag.

"What is she doing?" Danny asked.

"She's… not doing anything, Danny," Stiles said as he walked around the bed, towards me. "You're dreaming, this is all a dream." He started helping me with Danny's stuff.

"Why are you going through my stuff?" Danny asked, and Lydia sighed.

"They're not. Not really. It's a dream, remember?" she said in her most soothing voice. Though, the look she gave Stiles and me that clearly told us to 'hurry up!' wasn't as soothing.

"Why would I dream about them going through my stuff?" Danny asked. I nearly let out a laugh, but Stiles quickly slapped his hand in front of my mouth.

Lydia rolled her eyes. "I don't know, it's your dream!"

I frowned as I took out a large pack of paper, must be an assignment for something. I was about to put it away when Stiles snatched it from my hands, staring at it before showing it to me. Telluric currents in Beacon Hills, Danny's physics assignment. I gave Stiles a half-shrug, but then he turned the page around. There, on the second page, Harries had written something with red pen: " _I strongly advise you to choose another subject. The idea here, while innovative and thoughtful, border on pseudo-science. Not suited for class."_ I nodded at Stiles, this had to be it. We started putting the rest of Danny's stuff into his bag, keeping the assignment.

"Let's go," I whispered to Lydia as we walked past her.

As we walked out of the hospital, Stiles' phone rang. It was Scott. We quickly made our way to the jeep, where Stiles put his phone on speaker.

" _Allison found something. Her dad has a map of the town, he marked all the spots where people were taken, sacrificed, and found."_ I frowned at that, how was that significant? " _Also the ones that haven't happened yet."_ Oh.

"Well Danny found something too," Stiles said, ",something to do with telluric currents. Harries told him not to continue researching it. He's got a map of the town, marked the currents."

"Maybe the two maps match?" Lydia offered, "it's the most obvious connection."

"Meet at the clinic?" I asked.

" _Sure. Cora's with me, she'll be there too."_

~o~

We were gathered around the working bench, all of us.

"I copied my dad's maps," Allison said as she laid them out on the bench, next to Danny's map. And indeed, they matched.

"Nice work, Lyds." I smirked at Lydia. "Badass Banshee." She just smiled back, over the past few months she'd come to accept what she was more and more.

"So, Deaton was taken here…" Stiles circled the building on the map, which happened to be at one end of a current. "So, somewhere along this current…"

"There," Cora placed her finger on a point in the map where to currents crossed. "He's in the vault. He's in the same vault."

It was then that my phone rang. Without hesitating, I picked it up.

" _Lora? Lora the plan didn't work,"_ Isaac said, " _they cut the power."_ He then hung up. I looked up at the group.

"They cut the power," I said, clenching my hand into a fist. "I'm going."

"I'll go get Deaton. The rest of you go." Scott left little room for objections, so after a second of hesitation from Stiles, we headed for the jeep.

~o~

As we arrived at the building where Derek lived, which was really an empty first floor with a loft upstairs, where Derek lived, the other four immediately headed for the first floor, where the power generator and fuse box was. I, on the other hand, felt like four was plenty of people to handle that.

"I'm going upstairs!" I yelled before turning around and walking towards the stairs on the side of the building.

"Wh- Lora!" I could hear Stiles yell as I went up the stairs.

"I'll go after her," soon Lydia had caught up on me. "You should really stop doing this!"

I frowned at her. "What?"

"Go headfirst into…" she froze. Which could mean only a few things. "Boyd…" she whispered. That was enough for me to know what was going on: The Alpha's were forcing Derek to kill him.

"Tell Stiles to go get another jar of Blackthorn," I told her, taking off my jacket. Even when I really couldn't transform, I'd taken habit of wearing tanktops.

"No, no don't! Lora!" But Lydia was too late, I'd already shifted, with it came the burning in my lungs. With no hesitation, I jumped up and flew towards Derek's window in the loft, which had the Alpha Pack's triskele on it. Through the window, I could see the twins holding Derek, forcing him to hold up his arms with claws out. Kali was lifting Boyd up in the air. In the back of the loft was Miss Blake, but Isaac was with her. No other Alpha's.

Shards of glass flew through the loft as I crashed through the window, but I had no wish to focus on that. Instead, I flew towards Kali, taking Boyd from her. With just one touch, I could sense that he was already as good as dead. In one swift motion, I grabbed his wrist, dug my claws in before pulling them out again and swinging them towards Kali.

She stopped my hand, but I just swung my other arm, this time only just managing to get my claws in deep enough. In a blink, she was lying on the floor, unconscious.

"I would be very careful with your next move," I said through clenched teeth as I turned towards the twins. "I'll do you a favour. Take Kali, leave, and I won't kill all three of you. Oh, and while you're at it, tell Deucalion I decline his offer."

They looked at each other for a second, then Ethan turned to me and growled, but his brother put his arm over him. "Don't. We'll take care of her later." Then, they stood up, Aiden carrying Kali as they left the loft. And Silence fell.

I let out a shaky breath, shifting back. I glanced at my hands, which were covered with blood, and gagged. My head felt light and my knees were shaking until they gave in. I would've fallen hadn't it been for Derek, who caught me.

"Why did you do that?" he whispered, slowly lifted me up into the air and placed me on the desk, since the floor was covered in water.

"Couldn't let them," I wheezed. My lungs weren't on fire any longer, they were burned to a crisp. "... force you to kill."

"Lora!" Lydia cried as she ran into the room, not caring that her shoes were now soaking wet. "Lora, what…" She put one hand over her mouth as she saw Boyd.

"Sorry," I coughed. When I lowered my hand, I frowned, not sure whether or not some of the blood on it was mine. I quickly wiped it off on my jeans.

Lydia handed me my inhaler. "Take two." I nodded at her, pushing down the inhaler twice, wincing as I did. "Cora and Allison are headed to the clinic, Stiles…"

"Is here." I looked up at Isaac's comment, seeing Stiles running towards me. How hadn't I noticed that? Then again… I was a bit distracted by, you know, dying. Hadn't really thought this one through.

"Why did you do that?" Stiles' voice was trembling, as were his hands. I just smiled sheepishly at him, so he turned to Derek. "Can you carry her?"

Derek nodded, already moving to do just that. "You've got the jeep?" He lifted me up, carrying me through the loft, down the stairs and into the jeep with ease, where he placed me into the backseat, where Lydia joined me.

"We good to go?" Stiles called from the front, though he didn't wait for an answer before he floored it.

"Come on Lora," Lydia mumbled as she clutched my hand in hers, "don't die. I will personally bring you back to life and then kill you if you die!"

"You'll have to get in line," Stiles muttered.

 **A/N: Hey, remember when I actually uploaded on time? Yeah, me neither. Well, here's the new chapter! Bit of an odd start, bit of an odd ending, but hey, what can you do? (I could write better stories but let's not go there)**

 **I'm fully aware that there's a lot of... dying for Lora in this series so far, but that kind of... happened. I won't guarantee it won't happen again in the future, (if she doesn't die this time, that is) but we'll see.**

 **As always, thank you so much for reading, and until the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	15. Chapter fourteen

**Chapter fourteen: Visionary**

Let's just say that Deaton wasn't all too happy about, you know, almost being a human sacrifice and then having to save my life. Again, because I didn't listen to him. We arrived at the clinic first, where Lydia did what she could to at least keep me alive until Deaton arrived with Scott and the sheriff, who was very confused. We… might not have told him all about the whole me getting poisoned thing.

"What's happened to her?" the sheriff asked Stiles as they watched Deaton treat me.

"The Darach poisoned her, then she shifted whilst the antidote was still fighting against the poison, then the poison took over and now she's dying." I shot Stiles an apologetic smile whilst he explained the situation. Whilst I did that, I immediately noticed that his hands were shaking and that we was biting on the nail of his thumb.

"I'm going to have to sedate you," Deaton pulled my attention back to him. "I'll need to purify your lungs, but not when you're conscious." He turned to the others, "You might want to leave the room for this one," When they'd left, he looked back at me. "Ready?" I let out a sigh and nodded, not even wincing when he put a needle in my neck.

"See you in a bit, I guess," I mumbled as my vision started to blur.

~o~

I woke up in bed, at home. Stiles was sitting at his desk, his back turned to me.

"H-" I coughed, my throat burning as I did. Maybe no talking for now. Though the coughing did cause Stiles to spin around on his chair, eyes wide.

"You okay?" he asked and I nodded, though he stood up and gave me a bottle of water anyway.

I took a few gulps before lowering the bottle. "Thanks," my voice was still a bit hoarse, but I couldn't complain. "How long was I out?"

"Couple of hours," Stiles said as he fidgeted with his fingers, I nodded and pushed myself up so I could sit instead of lie down. "Hold on, I gotta call, tell them you're alright," Stiles said as he took out his phone.

"Who?"

"Lydia, Isaac, Scott, dad…" he frowned, "Maybe I'll just text them." I smiled and closed my eyes, focusing on my breathing for a while. Deep breaths still hurt, and I doubted that running would be on the menu for another while.

"All done," Stiles put his phone back in his pocket. "You were out for nearly a day,"

I blinked in shock. "Oh," I tried to shrug it off, "What'd I miss?"

"Nothing much," Stiles sighed, "Deaton's fine. Morell is the Alpha Pack's emissary. Scott and Allison went for a little chat with Gerard. Apparently, Deucalion was once a good friend to both your parents and the Hale family. Then he tried to ambush Gerard and ended up getting blinded by Gerard, who claims he can see as a wolf, so technically he's not always blind." He saw my face scrunch up and shook his head, "Yeah, I don't know whether to believe him either."

"Believe who?" My head shot towards the door as I heard Lydia's voice.

"Gerard," I didn't bother to hide the disgust in my voice. Lydia nodded and walked in, sitting down on the end of my bed. "I figured it out," she sighed, "why you… you know. Derek's eyes are blue. He was forced to take the life of an innocent and it changed him." she tilted her head as she looked at me. "You didn't want to put him through that again, did you?" I nodded, though I frowned when Lydia looked at Stiles, urging him to say something that he didn't want to say. Eventually, he gave in and sighed.

"Why didn't you tell us about Deucalion's offer?"

"We heard about it from Isaac." Lydia added, giving Stiles a look "Well, at least I did." I quickly looked down as I realised: he'd probably known about it all along.

"How?"

"The marks on your neck. You forgot about your scarf when…" he blushed, "you know. Found out soon enough what had happened."

"You're not mad?"

Stiles rubbed his eyes. "No. Yes. Maybe. I don't know, alright? I trust you." He shook his head. "Oh, and Derek is missing, by the way. No clue where he's gone to." I wasn't sure whether I was glad that he changed the topic so quickly, as I didn't know for sure why he'd done it.

An awkward silence fell, and neither Stiles or I dared to break it. We just didn't know what to say. So instead, Lydia said something. "Well, I've got the pizza. Though I didn't get anything for Lora, so you'll just have to share with us."

I frowned as I spotted a devious smile on her face. "What pizza's do you have then?"

Now Lydia was smirking. "Hawaii." I let out a groan, but that managed to make Stiles' laugh, so there was one good thing to it.

~o~

 _The next day_

"Just go see if she's okay, alright?" Scott pleaded Isaac, who sighed and finally gave in. Allison hadn't shown up for school that day, and Scott was worried but too much of a wuss to actually go himself.

"And be careful!" I warned him. Allison had proven herself to be trustworthy over the last few weeks, but she was still trained to kill. If Isaac crept up on her…

"Have you seen Stiles?" I asked Scott, who shook his head. I let out a sigh and figured I'd see him during our first period. As my luck would have it, the bell rang and I had to go to English.

"Idioms, analogies, metaphors, and similes." miss Blake said as she walked through the class, "All tools a writer uses to tell their stories." she stopped at Lydia's table and looked at the tree she'd drawn in her notebook. "Lydia, I wasn't aware that you had so many hidden talents."

Lydia smirked at her. "You and every guy I've ever dated!"

Miss Blake let out a nervous laugh at that. "Well, that's an idiom, by the way." She then went on to explain just what that was, but I didn't pay attention. The way she'd looked when she saw the tree, as if she'd been shocked.

" _What's that?"_ I whispered to Lydia, who shrugged.

" _A tree."_

" _Have you been drawing trees a lot?"_

" _W- I don't know."_ Lydia reached into her bag and pulled out another notebook, skipping through it to reveal that it had the exact same tree drawn in it, over and over again. " _Oh my-"_

" _Automatic writing. Banshee."_ I frowned at miss Blake. " _When did she move over here? Same time as the Alpha pack, right? Same time as the killings?"_

But Lydia didn't get time to answer, as Stiles and Scott turned around to face us. Or rather, Lydia, who sighed.

"What now?"

"We need you to distract Aiden," Scott said.

"The psycho werewolf?" Lydia scoffed, "No thanks."

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Come on, Lydia! We're not saying you should have sex with the guy!" I almost snorted at that and had to slap a hand in front of my mouth to keep myself from doing just that. Lydia rolled her eyes playfully at me before she let out a huf.

"Fine, I'll do it."

~o~

Scott, Stiles and I had managed to pull Ethan aside, but that didn't mean that he was willing to talk. Which was made clear by the sentence "Why are you even talking to me?"

"I helped kill your friend," he finished.

"And threatened to kill me. Quite possibly some other friends of us too," I said with a shrug, "Then again, I'd kill Kali within a heartbeat."

Stiles put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me back. "Okay, that's quite enough of that." He then glared at Ethan, who was eyeing me. "And don't you even think about telling your little werewolf friends you said that, because if you do, I'm gonna take an extra large branch of mountain ash, wrap it in wolfsbane, roll it in mistletoe and shove it down your little werewo-"

"Woah, woah!" Stiles was the one being pulled back now, although by Scott, not me. "We get it," Scott patted his shoulder as he smiled tensely before turning to Ethan. "We're talking to you, because we know that you didn't want to have Boyd dead," I knew he avoided the sentence 'wanted to kill Boyd' because I had been the one to do it. Typical Scott. "And that if something like that happened now, you wouldn't do it again."

But Ethan shook his head. "You don't know what we owe them. Especially Deucalion. We weren't like Kali and Ennis when we met him. We weren't Alpha's."

I squinted my eyes at him. "You two were omega's?"

Ethan nodded. "In real werewolf packs, omega's are the ones who get to eat last, the scapegoat of the pack."

"So you and your brother were the pack's bitches then?" Stiles add, and once more I had to stop myself from laughing. Oh he was enjoying that little fact way too much.

"Something like that," Ethan nodded.

I staggered back as Lydia's voice boomed through my mind. " _Lora, boys' locker room, now!"_

"But what about your emissaries? Did they get killed too?" Scott asked, not noticing me. Though Stiles did, he immediately leapt over to keep me from falling. Though we had trained more, when Lydia wasn't in full control of her powers (like when she was scared or panicked) she could overwhelm me a bit, make me lose my footing."

"Him too," Ethan said with a nod. "All of them are dead, except Deucalion's."

"We need to go!" I hadn't meant to yell, it just happened. "Cora's attacked Aiden, in the locker room." Just then, Ethan hissed in pain and grabbed his abdomen. It didn't take us long to get moving.

Rubbish thing was that I still wasn't allowed to run, so by the time I arrived in the locker room with Stiles (who'd refused to leave) Cora was lying on the ground, a wound on the side of her head, and Ethan had left with Aiden.

"What the hell did he do?" I asked as I crouched down next to Cora, looking at the wound on her head. "Bash her head in with a weight?" The look Lydia gave me said enough: Aiden had done just that.

Cora stood in front of the mirror, using water to wash away the blood from her face.

"Do you realise how suicidally crazy that was?" Stiles shook his head at her. Cora just looked from him to me and raised her eyebrow. I looked down.

"I did it for Boyd." she eventually said, "It's not like you three are doing anything." She turned to look at me. "Except you, I…" she sighed, "thank you. For not putting Derek through that." Then her gaze turned harsh again as she looked at the others. "Then there's you. Just a couple of stupid teenagers who think they can stop people from getting killed."

"We're trying…" Scott objected, though he knew that it wasn't enough.

"And you're failing," Cora scoffed, "All you do is find the bodies."

"That's sort of what Banshee's do, you know," I defended for Lydia. "And yes, we are just teenagers, and yes, we are trying our best." Cora just walked away, neither denying nor agreeing with that statement. I sighed and turned to Stiles.

"Come on, let's get her back to the loft."

~o~

We were in the car when Allison called us. She and Isaac had found something on the desk of her father, a fivefold knot with the groups of sacrifices written in the open spaces. Also the ones that still were to come.

"Philosophers, and?" Stiles asked.

"Warriors," Allison filled in, "And, since they found a deputes' body at the school this morning… warriors could be law enforcement, right?"

"Yeah…" Stiles said.

"We'll tell the sheriff, no depute should be left alone at any time," I agreed before looking back at Core. "I get that you want to fight, but could you at least wait till I can help? I'm sure Isaac is wil-"

"Or maybe we shouldn't fight them?" Stiles interrupted, "You know, the killer Alpha werewolves?" He turned his head towards me. "Have you not noticed all that's happened? Over the last few weeks you tried to kill yourself by digging your claws into your own skull-"

"Stiles," I tried to interrupt, but he just continued.

"Then you got poisoned and almost died, then you shifted and nearly died again, my best friend nearly killed himself, his boss nearly got ritually sacrificed, Heather, who I've known since I was three, was ritually sacrificed, Boyd died, and now you want to-"

"Stiles! The road!" I yelled, Stiles' head snapping back towards the road as he hit the breaks. We'd almost run into another car which was waiting at a traffic light.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

"How about we take Cora home and then talk about… all that."

"Yeah…"

"Also maybe get back to school," I added as I looked at the time on my phone, "our free period is almost over."

~o~

When we did arrive at school, we were immediately greeted by Lydia. Well, I say greeted, it was more like she ran up to us in panic.

"Mister Westover got taken," she panted. "He didn't show up for class and somehow I ended up in his classroom. When I snapped out of it, I… hold on," she took out her phone and showed us a picture. On the board were four circles overlapping each other, a symbol I recognised from somewhere. In the right circle, there was a '2' written in Lydia's handwriting.

"So he's the second sacrifice, but what group?" I frowned at Stiles, "He isn't a guardian, is he?"

"Actually," Stiles paused in thought, "it might be philosophers. The depute, she used to be a teacher in middle school."

"But there's dozens of teachers in Beacon Hills," Lydia reasoned, "how are we going to know which one?"

I shrugged and let out a sigh. "We can't know. Besides, school's almost over, just one more period now. They'll all go home and we won't be able to do anything,"

That's when Scott ran up to us. "Not all of them," he said, having heard me with his werewolf… thingies, "they'll be at the memorial."

"So if all the teacher will be at the memorial…" i started, looking at Stiles, who nodded.

"So will the Darach."

 **A/N: Well would you look at that, I'm on time! I'm not sure if I'll manage next week's upload, so sorry in advance in case I don't. This chapter has quite a little twist on Lorraine's attitude, but I guess you already noticed? Well if you haven't, it'll become clearer in the upcoming chapters :)**

 **As always, thanks for reading!**

 **~Lilly**


	16. Chapter fourteen, part II

Stiles and I were sitting in the jeep in the school parking lot. The memorial was moments away from beginning, but Stiles insisted on having a talk. Yet, after a full minute, he still hadn't said anything.

"So… what do you want to say?"

"I…" he rubbed his face with his face. "I don't know."

I sighed. "Fine, I'll start. Remember the motel? I almost clawed my way into my skull?"

Stiles nodded, a painful expression on his face. "Yeah."

"I genuinely wanted to do it, you know. That's not a feeling you just shake off." I looked at him and saw him nod. Relief washed over me. He understood. "All the stuff that has happened since I moved back here- and I mean with my dad, not from training- it's a lot to handle."

He nodded again. "I know, I know, I just," he sighed. "I don't want anything to happen to you."

I chuckled and kissed him on the cheek. "That was really cliché, but cute."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, well, thanks." He shook his head and unfastened his seatbelt. "Come on, we've got a human sacrifice to worry about."

~o~

When we entered the hall, the memorial had just begun. The entire room was filled, so we were left standing next to Scott at the back, with some others.

At first, nothing happened. Just your typical sad music played by the school orchestra, though it did sound a bit dramatic. Then, Lydia called out to me.

" _Lora, I think someone-"_

" _Someone what?"_ I nearly yelled it out loud, but she didn't reply. I tapped Stiles on the shoulder and nodded towards the door. He and Scott followed me outside.

"Someone knocked Lydia out,"

Scott's eyes widened as he stumbled over his words. "Wh-bh… why her?"

Stiles slapped himself on the forehead. "Same reason the Darach went after Lora. She knows too much." He looked around, but nowhere in the windows was any sign of movement.

Scott nodded, "Yeah, but the Darach needs another philosopher, Lydia's no-" We gave him a look and he shut his mouth and nodded once more. "Yeah, good point."

We ran back inside and started scanning the halls, peeking into the window of each classroom as we passed it. After we covered one floor and found nothing, we decided to split up. I'd go to the second floor, as I was in no shape to climb that many stairs yet, Stiles the third (as he was also in terrible shape) and Scott the upper floor.

When I was halfway my floor, I heard Lydia again. Her voice was so weak, I couldn't make out what she was saying.

" _Where are you?"_ I asked firmly. Again, only incoherent sounds came as an answer, followed by a sob. Then, a scream. My head shot up and my legs started running without me even thinking about making them. The scream of a Banshee, it was a powerful thing.

I stopped in front of a classroom at the end of the hallway. When I looked through the window I saw miss Blake standing behind Lydia with a cord wrapped tightly around her neck. She did leave the girl's hands untied though.

Lucky for me, the scream had surprised even her, as she was looking at Lydia in a daze, her back turned towards the door.

"You have no idea what you are, do you?" she asked, a little out of breath. I took that as my cue to open the door, pocket knife in my hand. Blake turned around with wide eyes, but those soon narrowed. "I thought I got rid of you for good,"

I shrugged. "No rest for the wicked. Though I must compliment you on your attempt. Very… classic. Though I must ask: what do the druids know about banshees? Because the last time I checked, and trust me, I've checked," I kept on rambling, glancing quickly at Lydia as I did. The girl gave me a curt nod. "Banshees have tons of powers, one being that they can find dead bo-" I was cut off by a scream, after which Blake flew back through the air.

Whilst I'd been talking, Lydia had stood up and gathered strength to do what we'd practiced: use her scream as a weapon. It'd worked. Thank God.

"And there's also that," I added. Before Blake could get up, I took my gun out of my jacket and fired three times. Lydia gasped and I watched in disgust as the entry wounds healed within seconds. "Fu-" I cried out in pain as a knife embedded itself in my shoulder. Blake smirked at me. I wondered if she'd been practicing an evil smirk in front of the mirror every morning or if that just came naturally with being a crazy bitch.

Then everything started going really fast. Behind Lydia and I, the sheriff ran in. After taking in what was happening, he fired two shots directly at Blake, who healed just as fast as she had done when I'd shot her.

The shots were followed by a roar as Scott jumped in the room and ran for Blake, who dodged his swipes with no effort and sent him flying all the way back to the other side of the room. Just then, Stiles made it to the classroom door, but Blake shoved a desk in front of it.

Next to me, Lydia took a deep breath for another attack, but Blake just held up her hand and sent us too flying towards the wall. I could vaguely make out Stiles' shouts from the other side of the door.

Meanwhile, the sheriff had aimed his pistol again at Blake, who was walking towards me. "There was a girl, years ago, we found her in the woods," His words slowed Blake down and made her look back at him. "Her body and face were slashed apart." Blake's mouth fell open for a split second. "That was you, wasn't it?" And she closed it.

"Maybe I should've started with philosophers. With knowledge and strategy," she said, turning around to look at Lydia. The sheriff shot a bullet into her back, but she didn't even wince. "Or warriors," she smirked at me, then took the knife in my shoulder by its hilt and pulled me up by it. "Maybe healers?" she added with a smirk when she saw me wince. The knife was pulled from my chest, but as Blake turned around she used it to slash my cheek. Once she'd pulled a full 180, she threw the knife at the sheriff, right in his abdomen.

"Or guardians," she continued as she stormed towards him. I tried to get up again, but without even looking she waved her hand and pushed me back. My head started throbbing the second after it hit the wall. I slowly opened my eyes. Blake had pushed the sheriff against the window.

Scott and Lydia were unconscious. My shoulderwound had created a red stain going down my shirt and my cheek was stinging. I tried to get up once more, hoping Blake was too distracted. Pressing one hand against my shoulder, I ran towards the window. I only got halfway when Blake threw back her knife at me again. I dodged it, but as I did I could hear the window shatter. When I got back up, both Blake and the sheriff were gone.

Behind me, Stiles managed to push the desk away with the door, and he ran into the classroom.

"I'm sorry," I said, watching as he stared at the now shattered window, breathing heavily.

"Stiles?" Scott's voice came from behind me. "We need to get her to the hospital." Before Scott's gesture at my shoulder, it was like Stiles hadn't even noticed it. Giving that his dad had just disappeared, I didn't blame him.

"And Lydia," I looked back at the girl, who was still lying unconscious against the wall. "Two blows to the head, she might have a concussion. And call Derek, Isaac saw him with Blake the other day during the break." My face scrunched up in disgust. "Kissing."

Scott looked surprised for a moment, but he then nodded and took out his phone. "I'll call mom first, tell her you're coming."

~o~

Wasn't it just my luck that the entire hospital was in complete panic because of a massive storm? The only reason I managed to get aid was because Melissa had quickly bandaged my shoulder. Something I could've done myself… if, you know, I hadn't been stabbed in the shoulder. She also cleaned the wound on my cheek, but if I didn't shift soon that might turn into a nasty scar.

With that done, we needed to go to Derek's place and warn him, which we did. After dropping off Lydia at home, that is. Now it we just waited until Blake arrived to make sure Derek wouldn't listen to us. Too bad for her he already had.

We hid behind a wall -yeah, I know, classic- and waited for her to run in, pleading Derek to listen to her. Which happened to be exactly what she did and it made me want to puke.

"Derek?" she called out as she ran into the loft. "Derek, where are you?"

"Right here," Derek walked in from another room. She turned around, and I had to admire her acting skills. She looked absolutely pathetic and helpless.

"Oh thank God," Blake embraced him in a hug. "Something happened tonight, at the recital, at the school," she pulled back and took his hand. "And I need to tell you before you hear it from them."

Derek frowned. "Who?"

"Scott, Lorraine, Stiles, Lydia. They're gonna tell you things. Things you can't believe, you have to trust me okay? Trust me."

"What is it?"

"Promise you'll listen to me."

"Okay, I promise." Derek had some serious acting skills as well. I especially applaud him for now stabbing the woman when she kissed him. Though halfway the kiss, she pulled back.

"They're already here, aren't they?"

We walked into the room. "Surprise bitch," I held up her knife before. "You dropped something." And put it back behind my back.

She scoffed. "I've never seen that dagger before in my life."

I raised my eyebrows. "Oh, it's a dagger? Sorry, my bad. But then again, most people wouldn't recognise a dagger that fast, they'd think it was a knife." Blake opened her mouth to object, but I didn't give her the chance. "Where's the sheriff?"

"How should I know?"

"No use in keeping you alive then," I held out the dagger again. "You might survive a bullet wound, let's see how you'll fare without your head." Stiles pulled me back before I could actually make a move. He already had tears in his eyes, I didn't want to upset him any more, so I stayed put.

Blake had turned to Derek. "Are you just going to let her threaten me like that? These kids are trying to feed you a ridiculous story!" she turned to us. "Which they can't prove, by the way!"

"What if we could?" Scott asked. Blake frowned at him as he held up a jar filled with a brown dust.

"What's that?" Blake asked somewhat wearily.

Scott stepped forward. "My boss said it's both a poison and a cure," he unscrewed the lid. "Which means you can use it… or it can be used against you." He swung the jar, sending dust flying through the air towards Blake, who started coughing and retching. She tried to use her arms to disperse the dust, but it had already done its job. Her appearance flickered from her 'normal' self to the same face I'd seen in the fire at the motel. Once again, just seeing it made me nauseous, and this time I actually doubled over and gagged, as if I were the one inhaling dust.

By the time I'd got back up, she'd turned back to normal, though she was breathing heavily. Derek stared at her with wide eyes, vague traces of disgust on his face. Seeing that, Blake tried to make a run for it, but Derek grabbed her and pulled her back.

"Derek, wait, wait!" she yelled as he grabbed her by the throat with one hand. "You need me!"

"What are you?" Derek demanded.

"The only person who can save your sister." she groaned in pain as he lifted her up a few inches in the air. My head shot towards Stiles and Scott, who matched my worried looks. Cora hadn't been doing too well, so Peter had brought her to the hospital.

"Call Peter," Blake said, "Call him!"

Derek took out his phone with his free hand and did just that. He listened to Peter for a while, then said "Mistletoe." and hung up. As soon as he did, he squeezed Blake's throat harder, making her gasp in pain.

"Derek." Scott tried to get his attention. "Derek, what are you doing?"

"Her life," Blake struggled to get her words out, "It's in my hands."

I gritted my teeth. "Of course it is." I looked at Blake, who was now a foot above the ground and in constant pain. I let out a reluctant sigh. "Derek, let her go."

Derek glanced at me and promptly dropped Blake to the floor.

"That's right…" she looked up at us, a wicked smile on her face. "You need me."

I ignored her and turned to Derek. "We can always just torture her later."

 **A/N: Welp, I didn't manage to upload last week. Sorry for that, but I was on holiday and my entire family got sick the last day, which so happens to be my uploading day. I'm almost completely better now, and I did manage to upload this chapter! Lorraine is certainly not happy with miss Blake lol.**

 **As always, thanks for reading and until the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	17. Chapter fifteen

**Chapter fifteen: The Overlooked**

Scott, Stiles, and I were riding in the Jeep, following Derek and Blake, who were in Derek's car. We could barely see their car, it was raining so much.

Next to me, Stiles sighed. "Something feels wrong about this," he shook his head a little, "Like, we proved it to Derek, but she still had this look like it didn't matter. You know, like it was all still going according to plan.

"Yeah." I took a deep breath. "But we'll just have to do what she says. At least until Cora's safe." I tried to move my shoulder a little, but immediately winced in pain. Not good, not good at all. With my good arm, I opened up the mirror and looked at my cheek. "That's going to scar," I muttered as I traced the cut with my finger.

"Maybe it'll heal once you can shift again," Scott offered, but I shook my head.

"A scar is left after it's done healing. Perhaps if I cut it open agai-"

"No, nope," Stiles cut in, "You are not going to do that."

Despite everything, I chuckled. "I wasn't planning to, you dork. I've got tons of scars, they're not a big deal." I frowned as Stiles clenched his jaw at that, but he didn't say anything, so I just sat back in my chair as we drove further in silence.

~o~

Even though we parked the jeep right outside, we were soaking wet when we walked into the hospital. Derek was leading the way, his hand firmly grabbing Blake's arm at all times.

"Why didn't you take the aluminium one?" I asked Stiles, who was holding a wooden bat. "It'll break as soon as you hit someone with it." I reached into my pocket and pulled out a gun, glancing at it for a moment before shaking my head and putting it back. I wasn't going to give Stiles a gun. No way.

"Scott? Scott!" Melissa yelled from behind us. "What are you doing here? The hospital's evacuating."

"We're here for Cora," Scott answered.

Melissa frowned. "All of you?"

"Mom, just trust me on this: You need to get out of here." Melissa eyed Scott for a moment and nodded.

"Listen to me, the building's going in lockdown in thirty minutes, we've got two more ambulances coming up. One's ten minutes up, the other's twenty. Cora needs to be on one of those. They'll be picking up in the basement garage."

Scott nodded. "Got it."

Melissa sighed in relief. "Okay." She watched us go into the elevator. Well, Blake didn't exactly go, she was sort of pulled in by Derek. She wasn't amused by it, but she wasn't angry either. If anything, she was annoyed.

"You don't need to keep me on a leash, Derek," she said with a sigh. "I'm here to help." She looked around and saw Scott glaring at her, Stiles holding up his bat and me. I just stared back at her, hands in my pockets. The elevator dinged as we reached the second floor. Derek once again led the way, but froze in front of Cora's room.

It was empty, and the only thing different from all the other rooms was a small pool of black liquid filled with white mistletoe. From the pool, a trail of small black drops led to two closed doors ahead of us in the hallway.

Scott, having spotted it too, tapped Derek on the shoulder. "Derek."

Muffled grunting came from behind the doors, which suddenly swung open. Before any of us knew it, Peter was lying on the floor, looking up at us. "We've got a problem." He looked back at the doors he'd just sled through. At the end of the hallway were the twins, merged together. "Big problem."

The twins roared, and within seconds Derek had shifted and charged them.

I shoved Scott's shoulder. "Go!" He snapped out of his daze and ran to help Derek. Together they fought the twins, but we knew that sooner or later they'd lose.

Suddenly, Stiles handed me his bat and crouched down next to Peter. "Help me." He glanced pointedly at Cora's body, which was lying at the end of the hallway. Peter nodded and got up.

"What are y- okay." I pursed my lips as Stiles and Peter ran through the hallway, past the twins and to Cora. "Yeah, sure, leave me with the serial killer." I turned to Blake. "I'd say no offence, but you tried to kill me."

Blake was too busy staring at the fight to roll her eyes. She slowly backed away to the elevator. Since there was no fucking way I was letting that woman out of my sight, I followed her. Inside the elevator, Blake pressed the button for the first floor.

"Aren't you going to stop me?" she asked with a sigh.

"If you let Cora die, Derek would never forgive you." I eyed her curiously. "Something tells me you don't want that to happen."

Blake clenched her jaw shut as we reached the first floor. She stepped out of the elevator and looked around. A now familiar sound of a cane tapping reached my ears. My head shot up, and at the end of the hallway I saw Deucalion and Kali. Without hesitating, I pulled Blake (who'd gone into shock) back inside and pressed the button for the second floor. But Kali was fast. She managed to stick one hand between the doors just before they closed.

My hand reached for my knife, but it didn't need to. A shiver went down my spine as I could feel a wave of power surge through the room. Blake held her hands up in the air and slammed them against the doors. The elevator shook, but most of the damage was done to Kali, who flew back in through the air. The doors closed, and we were on our way up.

"Nice one," I muttered as I put a hand behind Blake's back, steadying her as she staggered back from the door.

"Thanks," she said, panting.

~o~

Somehow, Blake knew where to go. I wasn't too keen on her attempting to murder me (again), but I wasn't going to let her go either. So I followed her. Eventually, I could hear Scott talking.

"There had to be something we can do, we have to help her."

Blake pulled the doors open and stepped into the room. "You can't. Only I can."

"Yes, yes, ten points for dramatic entrance," I muttered as I walked past her, towards Stiles. "I'm fine." I whispered before he could say anything.

"I can save her," Blake continued as if nothing happened, "and tell you where sheriff Stillinski is. But there is a pack of Alphas in this hospital who want me dead. So I'll help you, but only when I'm out of here and safe."

Derek threw aside a table and stormed towards her. Scott quickly jumped in front of him. "She was trying to get out!"

"I was trying to keep from getting killed, you can't blame me for that!"

Stiles stepped forward, partially standing between me and Blake. "If you want to show you're one of the good guys, then heal her!" He pointed at Cora.

Blake shook her head. "Not until I'm safe."

"I'd like to volunteer a different method of persuasio-" Peter started, but I cut him off.

"Won't work, don't-" Now I was the one being cut off, by the P.A. system of all things. After a short squeak, Melissa's voice sounded through the speakers.

" _Uhm, can I- can I have your attention? Mister Deucalion… excuse me, just Deucalion, requests you bring the woman calling herself Jennifer Blake to the ER reception. Do this, and everyone else can leave. You have ten minutes."_

Tension and worry filled the room. The person to break the silence was Blake. "He's not gonna hurt her."

Derek pointed at her. "Shut up!"

"He won't!" Blake turned to Scott. "You know why. Tell them it's true."

I frowned at Scott, who seemed to be panicking. Then, it all clicked. "Oh… wow Scott, if it had been under different circumstances, I'd have been proud of you."

Everyone turned to stare at me. "What do you mean?" Derek asked.

"Haven't you noticed? Deucalion's pack, it's filled with special talents, but it still misses one thing." I looked at Scott. "A True Alpha."

Stiles frowned, in thought. "That's… a beta that becomes an alpha out of his own strength, right?" I nodded.

"It doesn't matter." Scott said. "We still need to get Cora out of here."

Stiles frowned at him. "Scott, your mom…"

"My mom," Scott cut in, "Said there was another ambulance leaving in twenty minutes. I don't think we've been here that long."

Peter shook his head. "The twins aren't just going to let us walk out this place."

"I'll distract them." Scott said.

"You mean fight them," Derek summarised.

"Whatever I have to do."

Derek nodded. "I'll help you."

Blake shook her head. "I'm sorry, but I'm not going anywhere without you, Derek."

"I'll do it." Peter said, making the rest of us look at him in surprise. "But I prefer to be out there with an advantage."

"Well, we're in a room full of hospital supplies…" I looked around. "There must be something to either knock them out or give you strength."

We then started rummaging through every single drawer. I tried my best to remember the non-celtic names of plants the druids used to both cure and poison people when looking at ingredients of medicine. I nearly slapped myself in the face when I remembered I'd brought my gun.

"Peter, are you a good shot?" I asked, taking it out.

He looked at the gun in disgust. "Well of course, but bullets will hardly slow him down."

I groaned and took out a bullet, showing it to him. "Mistletoe, happy now? I've only got four bullets left, so don't miss. The effect won't be as strong because they're both alpha's, so don't get too cocky."

He rolled his eyes, but took the gun. "Thanks."

"What about this?" Scott held up a syringe. "Epinephrine?"

Derek shook his head at him. "That'll only make them stronger."

"Well, stick it in Peter's neck then." Stiles suggested. Despite our situation, I chuckled at his phrasing.

"That's…" Peter froze. "A surprisingly good idea."

~o~

Whilst Scott and Peter were on a suicide mission attacking the twins, the rest of us snuck past them, towards the garage.

"It's still here!" Stiles announced as we entered the garage. And indeed, the ambulance was standing there with the doors still open. Stiles literally jumped in and helped Derek settle Cora on the stretcher. He then held out his hand and helped me get in.

"Derek, over here." Blake called. Derek frowned, but walked towards her anyway. I looked at Stiles, who shrugged and continued to make sure Cora was steady on the stretcher.

"Julia…" Kali called out in a singsong voice. I got ready to stand up, but Stiles pulled me back and closed the ambulance doors.

"What the hell Stiles, let me-" Stiles put his hand in front of my mouth and once again pulled me away from the doors. An ear piercing roar echoed through the garage. And if that wasn't enough to keep me from trying to get out, Derek and Blake running out of the garage sure was. Kali ran after them, but we waited until we were sure she was far away enough for us to even move.

Stiles reached over and tried the doors, which were efficiently shut. "Okay, okay okay." he sighed. "We're okay. Are you okay?"

"She's not breathing,"

Stiles rolled his eyes playfully. "I meant you, not C- what do you mean she's not breathing?"

I checked Cora's pulse and nodded. "Definitely not breathing." With some difficulty, I started doing CPR on her. "Stiles, you need to do the mouth-to-mouth."

"What?" he looked from Cora to me. "Okay, okay, ehm… tilt the head…"

"Clear throat, pinch nose." I recited.

"Okay, right…" he gave her mouth to mouth once, but there wasn't any change. "Do I… do I do it again?" I nodded, and he did it again. And again. And again. "Come on, come on…" he muttered, doing it one more time and… Cora gasped for breath and started coughing.

"Oh thank God." Stiles leant back and then looked at me. "You know, next time I put my lips to someone's mouth, it better be yours." I let out a laugh and kissed him on the cheek.

"You did great." I smiled and sat back down next to him, putting my head on his shoulder. "Now how the fuck are we going to get out of here?"

He put his arm over my shoulder. "If anyone can get us out of here, it's Scott."

"I'm offended," I murmured.

He rolled his eyes. "After you. But if you haven't noticed, you're still… you know." he sighed. "Still, I used to be the one with the plan. Or at least a plan B. Now…"

"Hey," I took my head off his shoulder to look at him. "You can't just have a plan for all this. Scott is good at improvising and leadership. That doesn't mean his ass would be dead if it weren't for you."

He smiled, but it soon faltered as he looked at Cora. "What if she's right? What if all we do is show up and find the bodies?"

"You don't know what would've happened without us."

"True, but…" his voice cracked. "I don't want to find my father's body."

I opened my mouth to reply when a growling came from outside. I pushed myself back against the wall, but since I wasn't just around the corner like Stiles, I was still in plain view. Stiles probably figured the same thing, since he turned around, pulled me closer and up on his lap. We held our breaths and waited for the person to leave.

I took a deep breath. "Thanks," Stiles cleared his throat.

"Yeah, sh- sure, no problem."

I smiled. "Stiles, we've been dating for months now, you don't need to get flustered."

"You're blushing too," he pointed out with a smirk.

"Am not."

"Are so."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh shut up."

He smirked again. "Make me."

"Maybe I will," I smirked back and leant in.

I nearly got a fucking heart attack when the ambulance doors swung open.

"Oh my f-" Stiles nearly fell off the small bench, but he managed to balance himself. During the process of that, he threw me off though. I groaned as my arms broke my fall.

"What were you d- I don't want to know." Scott helped me get up and basically threw Peter at me. "I need to go back for Derek, Blake, and my mom."

"Okay, two problems:" Stiles said as I set Peter down. "One: Kali's got the keys to this thing. Two: I just saw the twins, like, thirty seconds ago."

Scott nodded. "Stay here." And ran off.

Stiles also nodded and leant back in his seat. He frowned at Peter. "What happened to him?"

"Aftereffect of the epinephrine." I shrugged it off. "It's like sugar: gives you a kick, then it kicks you." I took out my phone and texted Scott.

Stiles leant over. "What are you texting him?"

"Well…" I sighed. "I've got a feeling they're plotting something, and they're not going to include me. S-"

"Why wouldn't they include you?" Stiles asked with a frown.

I smiled softly at him. "Because of you. Also, I still can't run, too much risk." I went back to my phone. "But they do have Allison. Have you noticed that she and Blake are equally tall and have the same hair and posture?"

"Wh- no."

I nodded. "Well, I don't think the Alpha's did either." I sent my text and leant back. "Now we wait…"


	18. Chapter sixteen

**Chapter sixteen: Panic**

As soon as Isaac arrived with Argent's car, Peter was up and about, carrying Cora over his shoulder and into the car.

"Stiles?" I called over my shoulder as I ran towards Isaac.

"Coming!" he said, though there was hesitation in his voice. I turned around and saw him staring at a paper that was hung on the door of the ambulance. He held a finger under one specific line.

"Stiles, we need to go!" Isaac had just opened the shotgun door for me when Stiles bolted out of the garage. "Stiles! Lora!" He called after me as I ran after him. Within seconds, my lungs were burning. Still, I ran on. Stiles didn't even notice me chasing after him. Not when he stopped for a few seconds to see Derek lying unconscious in the elevator, not when I ran up the stairs after him. I supposed he was chasing Scott.

I hadn't even reached the roof yet when I ran into Stiles, who was on his way back. He looked at me with wide eyes and a frown on his face.

"Lora, what the hell are you doing?"

"Fol-" I coughed, "Following you." I leant against the wall and tried to catch my breath. "Starting to second-guess that decision."

Stiles nodded and looked around. "Okay, okay, just… breathe, okay? Breathing is good. Stay here, I need to get to Derek." He started making his way down the stairs.

"And leave me alone in an abandoned hospital?" I asked between my breaths.

He winced and stopped in his tracks. "Fine, but no running, okay?" We didn't have to argue on that one. I was definitely not in the mood for any more running.

~o~

Stiles was about to slap Derek for the tenth time when he formed his flat hand into a fist. I stared at it with wide eyes; that was a little extreme, even for my standards. There was no need to interfere though, it was like Derek could sense that he was about to get punched in the face, as his eyes flew open and his hand immediately shot up to wrap around Stiles' wrist.

"Where's she?" he asked.

"Jennifer?" Stiles lowered his hand. "Gone, with Scott's mom."

Derek frowned. "She took her?"

"Yeah, and if that's not enough of a kick to the balls, Scott left with Deucalion, okay? So we gotta get you out of here. The police are coming right now, Lora and I are going to distract them, but you need to get the hell out!" He pulled Derek up, but the werewolf stopped halfway.

"Whoa." he looked at me. "What about Cora?"

"Isaac and Peter are taking her home." I got up from my spot on the floor, wincing ever so slightly as I did.

Derek nodded and fully got up. "How are you going to hold the cops off?"

I laughed. "Oh, didn't you hear?" I let out a fake sob. "I've got a real bad case of claustrophobia." And went back to normal. "Also I'm a girl and a teenager. For some stupid reason, grownups think we can't handle ourselves or our fears. Now go!"

~o~

Stiles and I sat on the benches of the waiting room, doing the obvious: waiting. Only the regular client at this hospital wouldn't be waiting for the cops to arrive, I suppose. Soon, sirens filled the air and a small group in FBI suits walked in, together with a man who looked a bit familiar. Upon seeing him, Stiles clenched his jaw and rolled his eyes for a second, but he soon recovered and went on with our plan. He already had his arm around me, so now he leant in and whispered something of which the cops would think it was comforting me.

"Watch out, that douchebag is Scott's father,"

I tried to hide my shock as the 'douchebag' walked over. Ever since I heard the sirens, I'd started fake crying. Still, my shoulders were shaking.

"A Stillinski at the center of this whole mess. What a shocker." Okay, maybe this man really was a douchebag. Walks into an abandoned hospital, finds two teenagers, one of which is crying, and he decided to take a jab at the other's family. Nice.

"Yeah, thanks, but do you think you can just get us a ride home?" Stiles snapped.

The man shrugged. "If you could answer a couple of questions."

"We've been stuck in the elevator, and she's claustrophobic, alright? So if you could just…" he waved his free hand through the air. "Do a thing so we can get home?"

The man frowned at him. "You're not the one who put the name on the doors,, are you?"

Stiles' head shot up at that. "What name?"

"Argent."

I looked up at the man, indeed seeing some similar features he shared with Scott. "Can we please just go home? I just came here to get my cheek checked out and suddenly there was this storm and then we got stuck and I-" my voice cracked. "I just want to go home."

The man's expression softened, and he nodded, turning to Stiles. "I'm sure the deputies know where you live?" Stiles nodded and helped me off my seat. "Go." he nodded towards the door and we didn't hesitate to leave.

~o~

We ended up in the car with one of the deputies Stiles was very familiar with. Lucky for us, as he didn't mind dropping us off at the flat where the Argent's now lived.

Even after we told Chris someone had written his last name on the lift doors, it was like he didn't want to believe it. He shook his head as the three of us (Stiles, Allison and I) walked after him into his office.

"The word is 'guardian', Allison. You more than anyone know that's a role I haven't quite lived up the in the past few weeks."

"But she took Scott's mom and Stiles' father," Allison said, picking up her bow. "That can't be a coincidence."

I cleared my throat. "Also, not to judge or anything, but it's like you've shifted your role in the supernatural world. The both of you." Both Argents stared at me and I shrugged. "Blake can itnerpret 'guardian' any way she likes. Could be parents. Stillinski is the sheriff, he's a guardian of the citizens. Melissa guards and protects the sick."

Stiles quickly contineud before silence could fall. "Yeah, I'd also consider the fact that someone put your name in large red block letters on the elevator doors. That kind of felt like a warning to us."

Allison walked up to her father's desk. "I think it might've been Morell. She knows a lot more than she lets on and she might even by trying to help us." I sighed and sat down on the arm of a big armchair that stood in the office.

"Well she needs to get on with that helping a lot faster, okay?" Stiles had grown more irritated over the last few minutes, a defence mechanism that I knew would only last so long. "Seeing that the lunar eclipse is less than two freaking nights away." He ploffed down in the armchair next to me and held his head in his hand. I reached out for his other hand and took it.

"Stiles," Chris said. "Don't give up hope."

But Stiles shook his head. "He could already be dead."

"I don't think so," Chris said, ignoring Stiles shaking his head again. "There's something about her tactics, it's like she's still positioning, still moving pieces into place."

"Pieces that include you," Allison reminded him.

Chris nodded. "Then let's not hang around to see the next move." He took out a map and laid it down on his desk. "Everything that she's done has been under a telluric current, so Melissa and the sheriff have to be on one of those currents, right?"

I turned my head to Stiles, who was now looking down at the floor. "Hey," I nudged him. "If we're gonna kick her ass, we need your help."

Stiles sighed and looked up at Argent. "So you seriously want to go after her? I mean what if she just takes you like the others, huh? No offence but what's the difference between you and them?"

Chris opened a drawer and took out a silver gun. "I'm carrying a .45. Maybe she can handle a shot to the leg, let's see how she fares with half her skull blown off."

I held up my hand. "Can I get one of those?" Stiles gave me a look. "What? I gave Peter my gun, I've only got my knife and some mountain ash. And thanks to you-" I meant to say 'your dad' but that wouldn't be the best choice of words. "I can only have one gun."

Allison bit her lip, but couldn't keep herself from smiling as she handed me a gun. "Thanks." I turned to Stiles. "We can find them. We've got a map with all the clues we need. The only thing we don't have is time." I got off the armrest and crouched down in front of Stiles. "You and I both know you're by far the best person for this, Stiles. Your father needs you."

Stiles sighed and looked up at me. "Where do we start?"

I smiled and gave him a quick kiss on the lips before pulling him off the chair and towards the desk.

Chris shone a blacklight on the map. "The places where the sacrifices have been committed have been different from where the bodies were found. I think that placement has to do with the strength of the current. So there's the school, the animal clinic, and the bank."

"Wait a sec," Stiles cut in, "She wouldn't use the same place twice, would she?"

Chris pointed at the Beacon Hills first national Bank. "Not if she didn't succeed the first time."

"Deaton," I said with a nod.

Stiles shook his head. "But that's just one place so far, we're going to need a lot more help."

"I can call Lydia, but…" I sighed. "She won't be strong enough to take on Blake. Maybe… maybe if we all attack her she could help."

Chris looked at us with a frown on his face. "Sorry, Lydia?"

"She's a Banshee." Allison and I said. Chris looked surprised for a good second, but then shrugged and accepted it. I appreciated that.

"I'll call her," I took out my phone and walked out of the room so I could call Lydia without all the noise of weapons around me. Knowing the Argents, they would start preparing any second now. The thought of leaving Stiles alone in a room with them made me clench my jaw for a split second, and I had to shake myself out of it. They'd changed their ways, Lorraine. It does happen.

" _Lora?"_ Lydia's voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

"Yeah, hey. How are you doing?"

" _...fine. What's wrong?"_

"Do you want to help us defeat a serial killer?"

" _Sure, just like any other regular teenager."_

"Not the time to joke, Lyds."

" _Right. Can you pick me up at my house?"_

"I'm with Stiles, but I'm sure he won't mind." I hung up and nearly jumped.

"Hey." Isaac said, chuckling at how startled I was.

I raised my eyebrow. "This funny to you?"

He smirked. "Maybe a bit, yeah."

I smirked as well, letting tears well up in my eyes for a second. "Allison!" Within seconds, the girl stood in the hallway, crossbow aimed at Isaac. Behind her stood Stiles with an aluminium baseball bat ready. Isaac's eyes widened and he quickly held up his hands in the air.

"I hate you…" he muttered.

I smiled. "No you don't."

He laughed. "No, I don't."

"Lorraine?" Allison called over. She'd lowered her crossbow.

"Fine! Isaac came to help, didn't he?"

Isaac turned around and held up his hand. "Can't shoot a crossbow or a gun." He frowned at Stiles. "Never tried a bat. But… I've been getting pretty good with these." He let his claws grow out.

~o~

Soon enough we left and went to pick up Lydia whilst Isaac and the Argents went to the bank. Once we arrived at Lydia's place, Stiles explained to her what had happened.

"No, I don't believe it." Lydia shook her head. "Scott can't really be with them. He can't be."

Stiles shook his head a little. "You didn't see the look on his face though. It was…" He sighed and looked down at his hands. I put my hand over his and gave Lydia and apologetic look from the couch we were sitting on.

"But what can I do?" Lydia asked gently. "I'm a Banshee, I know, but my powers… I'm not strong…" she trailed off and frowned.

"You're getting better," I tried to encourage her, but she just shook her head and kept frowning. Only then did I realise that she was thinking.

"When Blake called me a banshee she was surprised herself." Lydia looked up. "She didn't know yet."

I slapped myself on the forehead with my free hand. "The tree!" They frowned at me. "The tree in all of your notebooks. Blake complimented you on it. Said you had hidden talents or something. Oh, I knew it was automatic writing! Why didn't I-"

"You realised it now," Stiles cut in, squeezing my hand. He turned to Lydia. "Do you have your notebooks?" Lydia nodded and stood up.

"It's in my bedroom, hold on." With that, she left the room. As soon as she did, Stiles' phone pinged. I waited as he took out his phone and read the text he'd just gotten. He stared at the screen, his expression going blank.

"Stiles?" I leant in to look at the text myself, but Stiles pocketed his phone with shaking hands.

"Its eh- it's from Isaac. Jennifer, she too-" he let out a shaky breath. "She took Allison's father. She's got all three now." He looked down again, his breathing growing more and more rapid.

"We've still got time." Even as I spoke the words, I knew Stiles wasn't hearing any of them. I put my hand on his shoulder. "Stiles, what's wrong?"

He held up his hand, gasping for breath. "I think-" he breathed, "I think I'm having a panic attack." I wanted to slap myself for not finding out sooner. He'd told me about his panic attacks, he used to get them after his mother died.

"Stiles, what did you do to calm down?" I tried to make myself sound firm, but my own panic was seeping through.

He gasped for breath again. "I can't- I can't remember." He was hyperventilating now.

"Okay, okay, just… focus on me, alright?" he turned his head towards me, but his eyes were darting all around the place. "Stiles." I took his head in my hands and forced him to look at me. "Look at me. Breathe." His breathing slowed down for a bit, but as soon as he broke eye contact, it went rapid again.

"What's wrong?" I hadn't even noticed Lydia coming into the room.

"He's having a panic attack." I cursed myself for my own panic. Years of training, can stay calm when held at gunpoint, but the one time Stiles needs me I panic myself.

"Oh God," Lydia said.

"What do we do?" I allowed myself to look at her for a second. "Please tell me you've read something."

"I- I…" Lydia looked around, as if she'd find and answer there. "He needs to hold his breath!" She then whispered to me. I nodded and turned back to Stiles, my heart breaking at how panicked and… broken he looked.

"Stiles, focus on my eyes. Keep looking at me, alright?" He nodded, though his eyes darted all around my face. I took a breath and leant in, kissing him. He froze for what seemed like forever, but then relaxed and started kissing me back.

After a while, Lydia cleared her throat. "Still here."

I quickly pulled back, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks. "Right, sorry." I looked up at Stiles, who was now dazed instead of panicked. "You alright?"

He nodded, though he was slightly out of breath. "How- how'd you do that?"

I let out a breath and smiled. "Lydia told me you needed to hold your breath. I noticed that, even after months of dating, you still do that when I kiss you."

"Oh." he nodded and then frowned. "Do I?"

I chuckled. "Yeah, yeah you do."

"Well…" he sniffed. "Thanks." He looked at Lydia. "You too."

She smiled. "No problem. But… you might want to explain this to me." She held up her notebook, filled with the same drawing of the tree again and again. "How is this going to help us at all?"

Stiles and I turned around so we were sitting on the couch normally again. I couldn't help but smile as I noticed that he had one arm around my waist. "Let me see that…" Stiles took the notebook from Lydia and inspected the drawing. "Hold on…" he turned it around so the tree now looked like it was a stump with the roots below it. "I know where they are."

I frowned. "Where?"

He shook his head. "It's called the Nemeton, Peter told me and Cora about it after Kali and the twins killed Boyd. You were passed out on the bed." he shook his head. "Doesn't matter, but that's where she's keeping them."

"Well then…" I stood up from the couch. "We've got a Darach to beat."

 **A/N: I acutally really loved writing this chapter, so I hope you also enjoyed reading it! I personally liked the way I did the scene where Stiles got his panic attack, but if you didn't like it that's fine. :) I'm always open for consturcitve critisism, so feel free to PM me or leave a review if you think there's something that needs improving!**

 **Thank you for reading and until the next time!**

 **~Lilly**


	19. Chapter seventeen

Chapter seventeen: Storm

We were gathered around the metal workbench in the animal clinic. We being Isaac, Lydia, Stiles, Deaton, Allison and I.

"It has to be on a telluric current, maybe even at the axis of two, or where they all intersect." Stiles explained, leaning on the workbench. "I- I just know it was where Derek took Paige to die."

Allison stepped forward. "My dad and Gerard were there once, but Gerard said it was years ago and he couldn't remember where it was. And my dad is… obviously not here to tell us now."

"I'm sorry…" I frowned at Stiles. "Who's Paige?"

He rubbed his eyes. "She was Derek's girlfriend. He tried to get her the bite so they could be together, it went wrong. In the end, Derek…"

"Took her life." I nodded and let out a breath. "Wow. I didn't…"

Stiles put his hand on mine. "None of us did."

Isaac eyed us and must've seen I was uncomfortable, as he spoke up. "How do we find this thing?"

Deaton stared ahead. "There might be a way. But it's dangerous." He looked at us. "We're gonna need Scott."

My stomach dropped. I had a hunch what Deaton was going to suggest. "You can't be serious. The risk's too high." The others looked at the two of us in confusion and I sighed. "You'll need to be surrogate sacrifices for your parents."

Deaton nodded. "Exactly."

"Wh- how- how does that work?" Stiles asked.

I turned to him with wide eyes. "You can't actually be considering this."

"I need to find him."

"Even if it works, you'll be giving power back to the Nemeton. It'll draw the supernatural to Beacon Hills. As a protector, I should skin Deaton of even suggesting it."

"Lora…"

I looked at him for a moment. There was no way I was going to talk him out of this. "Fine." I kissed him on the cheek. "You and Deaton go find Scott. We'll take care of the rest here." I pointed a finger at him. "I still don't approve, but I promised you, so…"

He grabbed my shoulders and kissed the top of my head. "Thank you."

~o~

The plan was as follows: Stiles, Scott, and Allison were going to take a dip into a ice bath until they were practically dead, but they would slip into a trance-like state. It should take a couple of seconds, then we could pull them out. During their trance, they would've found the Nemeton's location.

That was, if the plan worked. Even if it worked, it would draw all kinds of supernaturl creatures here, and perhaps even worse: It would leave a scar on the souls of Stiles, Scott, and Allison. Which was a poetic way of saying that their brain will change because of dying, even briefly. That sort of scarring… it wasn't nice. Trust me, I'd know.

By the time Deaton and Stiles returned with Scott, the rest of us had set up the ice baths. Deaton only put in some mistletoe before turning to Stiles. "Alright, what did you bring?"

Another thing: all three would have to hold something important that belonged to their parents. Stiles held up his father's badge. "Blake kind of crushed it in her hand. I tried hammering it out a bit, still doesn't look good, bu-"

"It doesn't need to look good, as long as it has meaning." Deaton said.

Isaac stared at the object in Allison's hand. "Is that an actual silver bullet?"

Allison nodded. "My father made it as a kind of ceremonial thing. When a hunter finishes their training they make a bullet as a testament to the code." I had to smile at that. We did a similar thing when finishing the training for being a protector, though I'll get into that later.

"Scott?" Deaton asked, and Scott sighed, revealing a watch in his hand.

"My dad got mom this watch when she first got hired at the hospital. She used to say it was the only thing in their marriage that actually worked."

"Okay." Deaton gestured at the metal baths. "The three of you will get in. The rest of us will hold you down until you're essentially, well, dead. But it's not just someone to hold you under. It needs to be someone that can pull you back. Someone that has a strong connection to you, like… an emotional tether."

I stepped closer to Stiles. "Do you want me t-"

He nodded and took my hand. Together, we walked to the tub at the right. Stiles took off his vest and handed it to me. "You'll keep that warm for me, right?" I appreciated him trying to make me feel better, but the shaking in his voice didn't exactly help his cause. Still, I smiled and took the vest.

"If you die, I'll kill you." I reminded him.

He let out a short laugh. "Oh, I know." To our left, Scott and Deaton stood at the tub in the middle, and Lydia with Allison on the left. I cast a look at Isaac. He looked nervous, but not bothered. He and Allison had been getting closer, I could tell. Just didn't want him to get hurt.

"Okay…" Stiles stepped forward, leaving me behind him. He cast a look over his shoulder. "Any tips on coming back from near-death?"

"Refuse to die." I smiled and stepped forward, kissing him. "Good luck." He nodded and grabbed the edges of the tub before stepping in. Judging by how quickly his breathing changed, it was really, really cold. He let himself slide in until only his head was above the water.

"Oh, and by the way," Stiles turned to Scott, who was also in his tub by now. "If I don't make it back-"

"Don't you dare."

Stiles ignored me and kept talking. "You should probably know something. Your dad's in town." Scott stared at him with wide eyes for a second before turning his head back facing forwards.

Next to me, Deaton rolled up his sleeves. That was our cue. I put Stiles' vest around my waist and stepped forward, putting my hands on his shoulders.

"Lora, if I don't make it back-"

I clenched my jaw. "Stiles, I told y-"

"I love you."

I closed my eyes and let out a shaky breath. "I love you too."

Not the best thing to say before pushing someone into an ice bath for them to die in.

~o~

Let me tell you one thing: It did NOT last a few seconds. First, a minute passed. We asked Deaton what we had to do. He said wait.

Then, an hour passed. Still nothing. And another hour. And another. Until we'd been sitting at the animal clinic for almost sixteen hours.

"The full moon is going to rise in four hours." Lydia said. We were sitting next to each other on the floor. "The Lunar Eclipse will too."

I nodded and ate another fry. Since a few months, I ate when I was nervous. Let's just say I'd eaten a lot of food in those sixteen hours. Props to Isaac for getting food.

My head shot up as water flew over the edge of Scott's tub. I was up to my feet in a second when Stiles' head came above the water.

"I saw it!" Scott exclaimed as he climbed out of his tub. "I saw the Nemeton! I know where it is!"

I helped Stiles out of the bath. "You okay?" He nodded as I draped a towel over him. There was no way he could be completely okay, but he seemed fine for now.

"It's been sixteen hours." I said, louder now. The trio stared at me. "Yes, you've been underwater for sixteen hours, and the full moon's coming up in four."

Scott nodded and looked down in thought. "I need to get back to the Alpha's."

Stiles' head shot up at that. "No, dude, you're not going back with them!" He walked over to Scott, who was sitting on the edge of his bath.

"I made a deal with Deucalion." Scott acted like it was no big deal.

Stiles thought it was a big deal. "Does anyone else think that sounds like a deal with the devil?" He looked around the room, but no one agreed. I just shook my head at Scott.

"Why does it matter anyway?" Isaac asked.

"Because…" Scott paused. "I still think it's the only way we can beat Jennifer." Stiles let out an exasperated sigh at that, but I had to agree. Blake was strong, too strong for us to handle alone.

Allison didn't seem to realise that, as she turned to Deaton. "He trusts you more than anyone, tell him he's wrong!" she had half a smile on her face, like she couldn't believe what Scott had just said. This smile faded when Deaton shrugged.

"I'm not sure if he's wrong. Circumstances like this sometimes require that you align yourself with people you'd normally consider your enemies."

"So we're going to trust him?" Isaac asked with raised eyebrows. "The guy who calls himself 'Death, destroyer of worlds'? We're gonna trust that guy?"

I shook my head. "He didn't say that. We'll work with him to beat Blake."

Stiles stared at me. "Lora, you can't seriously be agreeing with this."

"We could use him to our advantage," Deaton suggested. "Use him as bait. Jennifer doesn't need to know we're working together." The jingle of a bell sounded in the distance, a sign that someone had entered the clinic. Deaton frowned and walked out of the room.

"I'm looking for Lydia." It was one of the twins, but I didn't know which one. Lydia frowned and walked out of the room.

"What do you want?"

"I need your help."

Stiles walked over and stuck his head around the corner. "With what?"

"Stopping my brother and Kali…" I walked over to the door and stepped out into the waiting room. "From killing Derek."

Oh I could've fucking slapped the guy. Actually, I did. I marched forward (depsite Stiles' attempt to stop me) and slapped him in the face. "Now you realise?" I yelled. "You have been here for weeks, you've been in the pack for at least months, and now you realise that -oh, they might be fucking mental! And do-" Stiles put a hand over my mouth and pulled me back.

"Sorry, she's a bit stressed." He removed his hand from my mouth, but kept his arms around me. I wouldn't have minded if it hadn't been for the water that was now seeping into my clothes.

"What do you want us to do?" Lydia asked. Judging by how he'd reacted to me slapping him and that we was betraying his own pack, I was putting my money on that it was Ethan.

"Take me to Derek's place, let me explain to him."

Everyone looked at Scott. Even though he wasn't really an alpha yet, without knowing it he'd been one for weeks, months.

After a moment of silence, he nodded. "Alright. Lora?"

"Yeah?"

"Now we know where the Nemeton is, would having our parents' scent help?"

"It should."

"Good. You and Stiles go-"

Stiles cut him off. "Take something that belongs to my dad whilst Lydia and Ethan go to Derek's place and the rest of you to Argent's? After that we meet at the entrance to the reserve? Sure, let's go." He took his car keys out of his vest that I was still wearing around my waist, took my hand and headed for the door.

I laughed as we headed for the door. "Good plan, Scott!" I called over my shoulder. I cast a glance towards Lydia. " _If anything happens, scream."_ She nodded as I left the clinic.

~o~

There was an insane storm going on outside as we drove to the reserve. We'd picked up the sheriff's socks on our way, and despite the odour filling the car and the thunder outside, I was starting to drift off.

When my head fell down for the fifth or so time, Stiles noticed. "You didn't sleep those sixteen hours, did you?"

I rubbed my eyes. "Didn't want to miss anything."

"It's okay, we'll be there in ten minutes. Nap all you like."

"Now there's an offer I can't refuse…" I mumbled as I drifted off once again.

~o~

I was woken up by a loud bang of thunder. When I opened my eyes, I could just see a branch flying over us.

"What the hell…" I pinched myself to make sure I was awake.

"I think it's Jennifer, her powers." Stiles said as we swerved to avoid hitting a fallen tree. He squinted his eyes at the road ahead: if there even was a road. There was so much rain and branches flying all over the place, I couldn't tell. Speaking of branches, one hit our front window.

"Woah!" Stiles swerved and looked back as the branch flew off the Jeep. My eyes widened as I could suddenly see what was ahead of us. It wasn't a road. Nope, not a road. Definitely a tree. I can absolutely confirm that was definitely a tr-

~o~

You know, waking up after bashing your head against god knows what part of a car interior isn't good fun. What's even worse is waking up and seeing the person next to you lying unconscious with blood dripping from a head wound.

"Stiles." I nudged him, but he didn't move. God, please don't be dead. I put my hand against his neck, and sighed in relief. He had a pulse. Good. "Stiles, wake up." I prodded him. Nothing. Great. Drastic times call for drastic measures.

"Ow, ow ow!" Stiles flinched as he woke up. He pulled back his hand and looked at it in disbelief. "You bit me?"

"And now you're awake, you're welcome. We crashed into a tree, the Jeep's dead. We need to run."

"Are you okay?" he asked, gesturing to his forehead. "You've got a bit of a…"

I nodded. "Fine. Now…" I grabbed the aluminum baseball bat from the back seat. "Where's the Nemeton?"

 **A/N: And that does it for this chapter! Hope you enjoyed it, even though the end was a bit choppy with a lot of scene breaks. After this one, this story will have only one chapter left... I forgot to mention that, didn't I? I plan on making the last chapter longer than 2k though.**

 **Also, once this story is finished, I'll be taking a break for one month (as I did when finishing the first story in this series) and after that I'll be back with weekly uploads :)**

 **Thank you so much for reading not only this chapter, but also all the others. There have been some shitty ones, but you managed to plough through them and for that I thank you. Until the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


	20. Chapter eighteen

**Chapter eighteen: Beacon**

"That's it?" I yelled as we ran towards a gigantic stump in the middle of an open field. The ground around it was collapsed, but there was one open gap.

"Yup!" Stiles sprinted for a bit and jumped into the hole. I was out of breath, but managed to catch up and jump in as well.

"Nobody dead?' I yelled as I landed. I looked up and saw that everyone was essentially fine. Then I noticed the baseball bat supporting one of the beams in the now collapsed root cellar that was below the Nemeton. "Told you aluminum was better than wood." Now I noticed that everyone was staring at me. "What?"

"Are you okay? Your lungs…" Allison asked. Stiles looked like he'd seen a ghost: we both hadn't thought about my… condition.

I took a deep breath, and felt no burning. "I think… I'm fine." I let out a sigh of relief. "Well, that's typical. Can't even fight until the fight's over!" Stiles chuckled at that as he patted me on the back. Then, his phone rang. "Can you even get service down here?" We were underground, in the middle of the woods.

"Apparently…" Stiles took his phone out of his pocket. "Scott? Yeah, we're all okay here. Sure, come pick us up. Oh and Scott…" he looked at the gap we'd jumped through to get in. There was no way we could get out. "Bring a ladder."

~o~

The day after that, the school was still closed down for repairs which meant we had a day off. We figured we deserved a night off and went for dinner. With help from Lydia's mother and a bit of money from my personal savings, we could afford a fancy dinner for six.

"Remind me to never let Lydia pick out my dress again," I said to Stiles as he helped me out of the jeep. He snickered as I tugged at my dress.

"You told me that last time, and I did remind you." I frowned and looked up at him. He had? "You said you couldn't be bothered to go pick one for yourself."

"Huh… right." I laughed, but stopped when I saw him hesitate. "You alright?"

"Hmm?" He rubbed his eye. "Yeah, yeah I'm fine." He held out his arm for me. "You ready?"

I linked my arm with his, but refused to walk. "Stiles, if there's something wrong…"

He shook his head and smiled. "Fine, just didn't sleep well last night." I nodded and smiled back, but I knew he was lying. That was alright, I also knew he would tell me when he was ready. So we walked to the restaurant in silence, arms linked. Once we entered and joined the others at our table, I could sense Stiles' mood lifting.

I was having a good time when Allison tapped me on the shoulder. "Lorraine, I was wondering…" Allison bit her lip. "Since the Nemeton is reactivated and Beacon Hills is kind of becoming a beacon again. Perhaps me and my father… we could help."

I frowned. "Help how?"

"Well, I've been thinking about our code-"

I dropped my fork as I choked on my bite of food. "You want to be protectors? You? The Argents? We've started at least two civil wars because your family was too hard-headed and now you suddenly think we're right?" I coughed and retched. "Fucking hell…"

"Lora, be nice…" Stiles whispered as he rubbed my back.

"Yes, yes. Ehm…" I looked up at Allison. "I'm sure you're true to your word, but in order to let you into the community you'll need to wait until the next meeting. Which won't be until next year."

Allison nodded, but still looked troubled. "So, it's alright with you?"

I sighed. "I guess, but don't expect a warm welcome. Funny enough, you're the ones who broke the code the most. Now, the Calavera's, gotta love those. Never broke the code, not once. Lovely people."

Stiles clapped his hands."Great! That's settled then!"

I nodded and held up my glass to toast. "To stopping a serial killer?"

Stiles held up his glass. "And to Scott, who is now an Alpha!"

We cheered and toasted. We had so many things to celebrate, we could've gone on for hours naming them all. Allison and her father becoming protectors, Lydia using her powers against Blake (she'd bought Ethan and Aiden enough time to save them), saving the sheriff, Melissa and Argent… perhaps the sacrifice had been worth it.

Yet there was still something bothering me, a gut feeling that things wouldn't remain this peaceful for long.

Sometimes I hated being right.

~o~

Ever heard of Cerastes? Well, imagine a big, brown snake. Now give it small goat horns. Venomous horns, by the way. Like, really venomous. Also, they're crazy flexible, they're almost impossible to catch. Well, the Nemeton had attracted them to the woods of Beacon Hills. How do I know? Me and Stiles ran into them when we were out jogging.

"You need a break?" I asked as I glanced at Stiles, who was running next to me. Sweat was dripping from his forehead and he was panting. Still, he shook his head, only to nod a second afterwards.

"God please."

I took another breath and slowed down. "Stiles, I don't mind training with you, but you might want to work on your stamina."

He rolled his eyes. "Well, than-"

I help up my hand as I heard a soft hissing. "Shh."

"Don't shush m-"

"Shh!" I looked around, trying to find out where the hissing had come from. "Are there a lot of dangerous snakes in California?"

Stiles was sensing my tension now, as he too looked around warily. "A few…" He took a few steps. Just before he set down his foot, I spotted to small white points sticking out of the ground.

"Don't!" I leaped towards him and pulled him away. "Cerastes."

"What?"

"The horned serpent. If you touch those horns, you'll die."

We watched the horns in silence, but they didn't move. I let out a sigh. "Maybe it didn't notice you. We need to run." I looked around, and now that I knew what I was looking for, I spotted more and more horns sticking out of the earth. "We're in the middle of their territory."

Stiles nodded and took a deep breath. "So what, we run?"

I nodded. "But carefully. Imagine running across a minefield. Only the mines are sentient and moving. Also you won't explode, but die in excruciating pain whilst they eat you."

Stiles grabbed my hand. "Run like hell, then?"

I nodded. "Run like hell."

So we ran. We ran and ran and ran, didn't stop until we reached asphalt road, where I slowed down and caught my breath.

"They shouldn't be able to get through asphalt. They've devolved over the years, they're not as strong as they used to be."

"Wh- ps-" Stiles spluttered. "This isn't their peak strength?" I shook my head and looked over at where we'd just come from. About ten small horns stuck out from the ground, heading towards us.

Stiles noticed too. "They can't get to us, right?"

I shook my head. "Not underground." As if on cue, snake heads started popping up from the ground, followed by their bodies. "Then again, they can always do that." I took my knife out of pocket and looked at it before stuffing it back and taking out my phone. "I'll call Isaac, you run."

"Not leaving you."

"I can fly."

"Fair point." Stiles started running again whilst I stood still. The snakes deemed the me easier prey. Just before I got into their range, I jumped up, let out my wings, and flew up to a tree next to the road.

" _Lora?"_

" _Tell the Argents to come to the nature preserve, that there' Cerastes following us."_

" _How'd you know I'm with the Argents?"_

In the distance, Stiles called my name. "Gotta go." I put my phone back and jumped out of the tree, flying towards Stiles.

He'd come a far way, but now he was slowly getting more and more surrounded by the Cerastes. There were six of them now, circling in on him. I dove down and swept him off his feet. (Okay, I pulled him up by his shoulders and struggled immensely to keep flying after the sudden add of weight, but let's just pretend)

Just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, Stiles yelled he could see the Argent's SUV coming. I sighed and we almost crashed towards the ground, I was so exhausted. I dropped Stiles and only a second after fell down myself. The asphalt scratched my hands and knees, but by the time I moved to sit down, the cuts were gone.

Stiles ran towards me and crouched down next to me. "You okay?" I nodded, too much out of breath to give a proper answer.

"How many of them are there?" I looked up and saw Argent standing in front of me, a machine gun in his hand.

"Six." Stiles answered for me.

Argent nodded and turned to Allison, who was holding a gun as well. "After we take out this one, we'll split up and search for the other two groups." He then turned back to me. "You and Stiles wait in the car, we'll handle this."

I opened my mouth to protest, but Stiles put his hand over it and pulled me up with his other hand. "Thanks, Argent." He then continued to push me towards the car, where we waited until the Cerastes were dealt with.

Of course, the Cerastes weren't the only things that had been drawn to Beacon Hills.

~o~

Honestly, I'm not even sure why we thought it was a good idea to go jogging again. This time we steered clear from the woods, but even then the Nemeton decided to fuck with us. Small tip: Don't go jogging next to a nursery home when there's a ton of supernatural creatures on the loose.

At first, we didn't notice the flock of birds sitting in the tree. Not until we ran underneath it and all the birds flew towards us.

I didn't even register what I was doing, but within seconds, I stood with my wings spread out and about a dozen ravens were lying on the floor, motionless. There was a single one left, sitting on the lowest branch of the tree. The weirdest thing was that none of the Ravens had gone after me. They'd all gone for Stiles. This one, too, was looking at him with intent eyes.

I gritted my teeth. "Don't you dare." It cawed at me, and I was surprised to find that I understood what it meant. "That doesn't mean he should be dead." It cawed again and I sighed. "Fine, if you it's necessary." Suddenly, all the other Ravens gained consciousness and flew up and away. By the time I'd recovered from my initial shock, they'd all gone.

I turned around to Stiles, who'd been standing behind me. "You alright?"

He looked down at his arms, they were covered in scratches. "Yeah, I- I think so. What just happened?"

I shook my head. "They made a mistake, it happens."

He let out a breath. "Okay… But they wouldn't have killed me, right?"

"No," I shook my head. "No, of course not."

"You're lying."

"Yeah… let's go home, okay?" I smiled and linked my arm with his. My breath got stuck in my throat as an image flashed in front of my eyes, too quick to see.

Stiles noticed and frowned at me, now even more worried. "Did you-"

I shook my head. "No, no, nothing. Just dizzy." Stiles nodded, but I knew he didn't believe me. Still, he didn't push it as we walked to where we'd parked the jeep. During our walk, I tried to convince myself I had just been dizzy, that my brain had a short blackout from shifting back, or, or… anything else, really. Anything but another vision.

The last time, Lydia almost died. If that happened, if anything, really, happened to Stiles… I didn't even want to think about it.

 **A/N: And there's that! The last chapter of this story... Honestly, I'm proud of myself for making it this far. Not as proud as I am of you guys for sticking with this story, though. As for the next one... oh boy, Void Stiles coming up! That'll be... fun? I'm using a shit ton of '...' today. Anyways, thanks for reading. I'll write a really short "in-between' chapter and upload it as 'Chapter X' of the new story, so you can follow that without having to remember coming back in a month, when I'll upload the 'real' first chapter :)**

 **Thank you for reading, and I'll see you in the next chapter!**

 **~Lilly**


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